BAGHDAD, Dec 5 (Reuters) - A parked car bomb killed five people and wounded 13 on a main road near government offices in the volatile city of Baquba in one of Iraq's most restive regions north of Baghdad on Wednesday, police said.

The town, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad is the capital of the ethnically- and religiously-mixed Diyala Province, which has become one of the most violent areas of Iraq after Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda militants moved there from other areas.

U.S. commanders plan to increase the number of troops in the province even as the overall number of troops in Iraq is due to decline following a reduction of violence across the country.

"We think we can address it with a little more combat power," Colonel Raymond Thomas, a military official in northern Iraq, told reporters travelling with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Wednesday, referring to violence in the province.

Attacks across Iraq as a whole have fallen by 55 percent since a "surge" of 30,000 extra U.S. troops became fully deployed in mid-June, the U.S. military has said. (Reporting by Aseel Kami in Baghdad and Kristin Roberts in Mosul; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

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