BAGHDAD, Sept. 5 (Xinhuanet) -- Violence flared in Iraq on Saturday with a suicide car bomb attack in Kirkuk, a joint US-Iraqi offensive on Latifiya, and heavy clashes between US forces and insurgents in Tall Afar, leaving at least 42 dead.

    In the northern Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk, at least 17 people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack on Saturday, local police said. The blast, taking place outside a police academy, killed at least 14 policemen and three civilians and wounded 20 others, saidthe police.

    Around 3:45 p.m. (1145 GMT), hundreds of trainees and civilians were leaving as the suicide attacker drove his car into the crowd and then set off the explosion, the police said.

    The Iraqi insurgents have frequently used car bombings, sabotage and kidnappings in an attempt to destabilize the country and drive out the US-led forces and foreign workers.

    Iraqi police have been a main target by suicide bomb attacks and hundreds have been killed during the past year.

    Earlier on Saturday, 12 Iraqi policemen were killed and five national guardsmen wounded in the major assault on Latifiya, a stronghold of insurgency, some 40 km south of Baghdad. A total of 200 suspects were arrested in the raid.

    Saturday morning, clashes between US forces and insurgents in Tall Afar, west of the northern city of Mosul, erupted as US tanks rushed into the town, some 390 km north of Baghdad, intending to conduct searches in the area.

    Thirteen Iraqis were killed and more than 50 others wounded in the fighting, medics said.

    Meanwhile, a US military helicopter was forced to land near the fighting scene, a US military spokesman said, adding that two abroad the aircraft were injured.

    Also on Saturday, saboteurs blew up an oil pipeline in southern Iraq, part of a wave of attacks on the country's oil infrastructure aimed at hampering reconstruction efforts.

    In another development, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier left Saturday evening from Jordan's capital Amman for Paris without any progress on releasing the two French journalists kidnapped in Iraq, Jordanian TV reported.

    Barnier arrived in Amman Wednesday night, after a 24-hour visit to Qatar, aimed at seeking support to release the two French journalists.

    The two men, Georges Malbrunot of the Le Figaro newspaper and Christian Chesnot, Radio France correspondent, went missing in Iraq on Aug. 20. The kidnappers, calling themselves the Islamic Army of Iraq, demanded Paris revoke a law banning Islamic headscarves in state schools.

    Despite the threat, France remained firm on the headscarves ban and the French new academic year started smoothly Thursday with the law taking effect as planned. Enditem