BAGHDAD — Two car bombs struck a disputed northern Iraqi city Wednesday, part of a series of attacks across the country that left at least nine people including two children dead, officials said.



Kirkuk deputy police chief Maj. Gen. Torhan Abdul-Rahman Youssef said a parked car bomb went off in the city center at around 3:00 p.m., killing three civilians and wounded eight. An hour later, another parked bomb exploded in the same area and killed four more — two children and their parents — as they were traveling in a car nearby. Kirkuk is home to a mix of Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen, who all have competing claims to the oil-rich area.



The Kurds want to incorporate it into their self-rule region in Iraq’s north, but Arabs and Turkomen are opposed.



In the town of Tarmiyah, some 50 km north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber rammed his motorcycle into a police patrol, killing two policemen and wounding eight people, a police official said.



A medical official confirmed the casualty figures.



No one immediately claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attacks but car and suicide bombings are a hallmark of Al-Qaeda’s Iraq branch.



Violence has ebbed across Iraq since the peak of the fighting in the last decade, but deadly attacks still occur almost daily. — AP