A suicide car bomber has attacked the capital of Iraq's northern Kurdistan region, killing at least four people.
The blast Wednesday in Irbil happened near a government compound and left charred cars and debris on the street.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
Iraqi forces and Kurdish peshmerga fighters have been battling the Sunni militant Islamic State group, which swept through large areas of northern and western Iraq earlier this year.
Car bombings are common in places like the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, but are much less frequent in the Kurdish region. Wednesday's bombing was the worst to hit the area since September of last year.
Iraq as a whole has seen a huge surge in violence in 2014. Data from the United Nations Mission in Iraq shows more than 13,000 civilians and security forces killed through the end of October this year - a 75 percent increase from the same period in 2013.
