A car bomb mistakenly went off in a militant compound north of Baghdad on Monday, killing 21 Takfiris including a suicide bomber.

A car bomb mistakenly went off in a militant compound north of Baghdad on Monday, killing 21 Takfiris including a suicide bomber, a police officer said.

The group were filming a propaganda video of the would-be suicide attacker when a technical glitch set off the car bomb in the Jilam area south of Samarra, according to Majeed Ali, the head of the Sahwa force in the city, and a police officer.

Jilam, a mostly rural farming area just south of the city of Samarra, has long been a Tafiris' stronghold.

The 8:00 am local time (05:00 GMT) blast went off within a compound in the area, Ali and the police officer said.

Violence has surged markedly higher in recent months, with more than 1,000 people killed in January alone according to government data.

Analysts and diplomats have urged Iraq's government to reach out to the disaffected minority to undermine support for militants, and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has launched a wide-scale operation against insurgency and Takfiri strongholds.