BAGHDAD, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The death toll rose to nine when three car bombs went off coordinately in different parts of Iraq's oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk on Monday, local police said.

    "The latest police report said that nine people were killed and 31 others wounded in the blasts, including four policemen in Kirkuk City," Brigadier Burhan Wasif, chief police of the city told Xinhua by telephone.

    Earlier, Wasif put the toll at five people killed and 22 others wounded.

    The first car bomb went off in central of the city, damaging several civilian cars along with a dozen nearby shops, Wasif said.

    The second car bomb detonated in the Kirkuk's Domiz market, and the third went off in the Ghernata neighborhood, damaging a communication tower, he said.

    The ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, some 250 km north of Baghdad, has been the hot bed of insurgency and sectarian violence since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 as the city's Kurds seek to annex it into their autonomous region while other Arab and Turkoman residents reject the Kurdish claim.