Suicide attack kills two policemen near Iraq's Kirkuk

A suicide bomber killed at least two policemen at a checkpoint near the Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Thursday, a day after an IS-claimed attack killed eight in the western city of Al-Qaim.

Three wounded policemen were also wounded when the suicide bomber drove a car full of explosives at their position, police sources told Reuters agency.

Reuters said the attack took place in the town of Abbasi, around 65 km southwest of the oil city of Kirkuk.

No group has claimed responsibility for Thursday's attack, but Islamic State militants often carry out such attacks.

On Wednesday, an IS-claimed suicide car bomb attack on a security checkpoint killed at least eight people, including five militiamen and three civilians in western Iraq.

The 9 am (0600 GMT) bombing at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Al-Qaim also wounded 16 others.

The town, on the Syrian border some 340 kilometres (215 miles) from Baghdad, was one of the last in Iraq to be recaptured from the Islamic State group in November last year.

IS fighters swept into Iraq in the summer of 2014, taking control of nearly a third of the country. At the height of the group's power its self-proclaimed caliphate stretched from the edges of Aleppo in Syria to just north of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

With its physical caliphate largely destroyed, the Islamic State movement has transformed from a "proto-state" to a covert "terrorist" network that will increasingly wage such attacks according to UN experts, "a process that is most advanced in Iraq".