Attack on British security firm in Iraq kills 4

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - A suicide car bomber plowed into a convoy of a British security company in northern Iraq on Monday, killing four foreigners and wounding five Iraqi civilians, Iraqi security officials said.

The British embassy said one of the dead was a Briton. The nationalities of the others were not known.

The suicide bomber targeted the last vehicle of the convoy in restive Mosul, a dangerous city where al Qaeda remains active, and the force of the blast threw the armored vehicle 40 meters (yards) into a ravine, killing everyone inside, police said.

"I saw the other members of the convoy bring out four dead foreign civilians from the smashed car. One of them was beheaded," an Iraqi military officer, asking not to be named, said by telephone from the site of the attack in northern Mosul.

"We can confirm that a British national was killed in an attack on a British private security company convoy in Mosul this morning. We have offered consular assistance," the British embassy said in a statement.

Mosul is on the front line of a longstanding feud between Iraq's Arabs and minority Kurds over land, power and oil wealth.

The region is also a hub for Sunni Islamist insurgents, and the U.S. military, which will end combat operations on August 31, sees Mosul as al Qaeda's last urban stronghold in Iraq.

Iraq is on high alert for insurgent attacks after a March 7 national election produced no clear winner and left the country adrift in political uncertainty.

Overall violence has dropped sharply since the height of sectarian carnage in 2006-7, but bombings and killings continue daily. (Reporting by Jamal al-Badrani; Writing by Suadad al-Salhy; editing by Michael Christie and Mark Trevelyan)