Kirkuk: Three policemen were killed and eight people were wounded on Monday by two explosions in Iraq's northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk, police said.
The first blast occurred in the Wahad Zahar neighbourhood in the south of the ethnically-mixed city, 240 kilometres north of Baghdad, killing a policeman and injuring five other people, police Major Salam Zengana said.
Later a second bomb, apparently targeting an official convoy in the same area, killed two other policemen and injured three other people, Zengana added.
Three of the wounded from the two blasts are in critical condition, he said.
Kirkuk has a mixed population of Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen. Long-standing Kurdish demands for the city to be incorporated into their autonomous region have fanned ethnic tensions.
PTI
First Published: Monday, January 04, 2010, 16:12