A car bomb ripped through the convoy of a senior Iraqi police official in the northern city of Kirkuk on Thursday killing at least eight people and wounding dozens more, officials said.
Brigadier General Salah Ahmed Faqih, chief of the province's traffic police, survived but two of his bodyguards burned to death in one of seven cars destroyed by the powerful blast, police said. Six civilians were also killed.
The attack happened at 3:30 pm (1230 GMT) as Faqih was leaving work in a four-vehicle convoy in the busy Al-Shorjah district of the city, Brigadier General Burhan Habib Tayyib told AFP.