MOSUL, Iraq, Aug 4 (AFP) - A brother of the founder of the Ansar al-Islam militant group was among at least 14 people killed in clashes on Wednesday between police and insurgents in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, officials said.
Two other people were killed in a separate bomb blast.
Fighting erupted at around midday (0800 GMT) southwest of Mosul on the west bank of the Tigris River, bringing the sound of loud explosions and heavy gunfire, an AFP correspondent said.
A brother and spokesman of Mullah Krekar, head of the Islamic militant Ansar al-Islam, was killed, a provincial government spokesman said.
"Khalid Sido, the brother of Mullah Krekar, was killed during the clashes in the Yarmouk neighbourhood," said Hazem Dalawi.
A military spokesman in Mosul confirmed that "multi-national forces supported" Iraqi security forces as they responded to the coordinated attacks.
Washington has raised concerns about Krekar, although Norwegian prosecutors dropped terror charges against the exiled Kurd, who founded Ansar al-Islam in December 2001.
Weapons were found inside Sido`s Opel vehicle as well as a black flag scrawled with "there is only one God and Mohammed is his prophet," Dalawi said.
Medics at the city`s hospitals said that 14 bodies, including two women, were brought in, along with 52 wounded, most of whom were civilians.
Two insurgents were killed and several wounded when they attacked the Nabi Girgis district police station with rocket-propelled grenades and guns, the governorate spokesman Galawi told a news conference.
Armed assailants 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 multi-national base, taking up positions in schools, which were empty during the long summer vacation.
At least five bridges were cut off. 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 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 Iraq`s 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.