BAGHDAD, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- Two people were killed and 24 people wounded in a car bomb explosion in Iraq's northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk on Sunday, a local police source said.

    "The bombing occurred when a booby-trapped car parked on a busy road in central Kirkuk detonated, killing two people and wounding 24 others," Brigadier Burhan Wasif, police chief of the city told Xinhua.

    Several policemen were among the wounded people, Wasif said, adding that several civilian cars were also damaged by the blast.

    Tensions run high in the ethnically mixed city, some 250 km north of Baghdad, as Turkoman and Arab minorities oppose Kurdish claims to annex the Kirkuk region to their autonomous enclave in northern Iraq.