MOSUL, Iraq, Aug 4 (AFP) - At least 12 Iraqis were killed and nearly 50 wounded in clashes Wednesday between police and insurgents in the northern city of Mosul, medics and police said, after two people died in a roadside bombing.
Fighting erupted at around midday (0800 GMT) southwest of Mosul on the west bank of the Tigris River, amid the sound of loud explosions and heavy gunfire, an AFP correspondent said.
"The hospital received 12 bodies, including two women, and 26 injured, most of them civilians," said a doctor at Mosul`s Medical City hospital.
The general hospital said 12 patients had been admitted with injuries, and the Salam hospital said eight people had been brought in for treatment.
Two insurgents were killed and several others wounded when they attacked the Nabi Girgis district police station with rocket-propelled grenades and guns, governorate spokesman Hazem Galawi told a news conference.
Armed assilants also tried to force their way into a branch of the Al-Jazeera bank in the New Mosul district, but security guards fought them off, wounding some insurgents, Galawi added.
US troops had fanned out across various city districts, near the main multinational force base, taking up positions in schools, deserted during the long summer vacation.
At least five bridges were cut off as plumes of smoke rose from the area and masked gunmen took up positions in streets across the southwest of the city, leaving police and national guardsmen deployed on the bridges.
Streets of this city of about 1.75 million people emptied after authorities imposed a curfew from 3:00 pm (1100 GMT) until Thursday morning.
Gunmen forced shopkeepers to close in the Bab al-Toub, Yarmouk, New Mosul and Hospital neighbourhoods of the city centre, said police.
"Another group of gunmen was also going around distributing weapons to people and urging them to fight the Americans," said police officer Wael Ismail Ahmed.
"We received a letter from the insurgents asking us to back off and not to interfere in their fight with the Americans."
Earlier a man and a woman were killed, and two other people wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in the path of a US military convoy, police said.
The clashes are the worst in Mosul since early April when insurgents fired at the provincial government`s headquarters in this mostly Arab Sunni Muslim city with Kurdish, Turkmen and Christian minorities.
Mosul`s provincial council recently elected Duraid Kachmula as governor to replace his cousin Ussama Kachmula, who was killed in mid-July along with two bodyguards as he travelled to Baghdad.
The US military and interim government have blamed repeated violence in Mosul on former regime elements and Islamic fundamentalists linked to the Al-Qaeda network.
Mosul, 370 kilometers (220 miles) north of Baghdad, has suffered frequent suicide car bombings against the nascent Iraqi police and national guard.