At least 15 people were killed and 30 wounded in a truck bomb attack on Wednesday outside the headquarters of a major Kurdish political party in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, local Iraqi official sources said.

The blast occurred at about 2:30 p.m. (1130 GMT) at the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) headquarters in Sinjar, some 400 km north of Baghdad, said the sources.

The KDP is one of the two major Kurdish groups in Iraq, which strongly support the holding of Sunday's elections on schedule.

Iraqi Kurds are mostly Sunnis, roughly accounting for a fifth ofthe population. They have fought for self-rule for decades.

The KDP and the other major Kurdish group, the Patriotic Unionof Kurdistan, are fighting together to try to consolidate Kurdish autonomy within a federal Iraq.