Iraqi men gather at the scene of a car bomb explosion in which two people were killed and ten others were wounded near a restaurant in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, on March 8, 2019.
Zaid AL-OBEIDI / AFP

Two people were killed in a car bomb outside a restaurant in Iraq’s Mosul late Friday, security forces said, in the second such incident in around a week.

A statement by the Iraqi military’s media centre said one young woman and a security officer were killed in the blast, which took place in the city’s eastern half.

Ten other people were wounded.

Iraqi forces ousted the Islamic State group from Mosul in mid-2017, but explosions and hit-and-run attacks have continued to plague the province.

Last week a car bomb detonated near Mosul University, killing one person and wounding 13 more.

On Wednesday night, six paramilitary forces were killed and more than two dozen wounded in an ambush south of Mosul.

Iraqi authorities have also warned that jihadists could slip across the porous border from Eastern Syria, where IS faces a ferocious US-backed offensive on its final redoubt.

AFP