A car bomb went off on Friday morning in the Iraqi city of Samarra, some 120 km north of Baghdad, killing a man and his wife, local police said.

"A car bomb parking near the house of Ahmed Sa'ad in Samarra detonated and killed him and his wife and badly damaged their house and nearby ones," the source from the city police told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The blast also wounded several others, he said.

The police think the victim, a shop owner, was targeted because one of his brother is the head of Samarra city council and another brother is a member of the Iraqi parliament from the Iraqi Consensus Front, a leading Sunni political bloc.

In a separate incident, a roadside bomb went off near a police patrol close to the Iraqi National Theater in Baghdad's Karradah district, damaging a police vehicle and wounding two policemen aboard, a Baghdad police source told Xinhua.

The attack damaged several nearby civilian cars, wounding four people, he added.

Daily deadly attacks against Iraqi politicians, their families and security forces shape one of major setbacks toward the U.S. and Iraqi hopes of transferring security control to Iraqi authorities and allowing U.S. troops to go home.

Source: Xinhua