The toll in a car bomb attack at a popular marketplace in Iraq's northern city of Kirkuk on Friday went up to eight people killed and 51 wounded, the city's police chief said.
"The final reports said that eight people were killed and 51 others were wounded in the car bombing of the crowded marketplace in Kirkuk," Brigadier Burhan Wasif told Xinhua by telephone.
Around midday a booby-trapped car ripped through a vegetable market in the predominantly Kurdish neighborhood of Hurriyah in Kirkuk City, destroying many nearby stalls, shops and civilian cars, Wasif said.
Earlier, Wasif put the toll at seven people killed and some 40 others wounded.
Ambulances and rescue workers rushed to the scene to ferry the wounded people to hospitals in the city, some 250 km north of Baghdad, said the police chief, adding U.S. and Iraqi forces immediately cordoned off the area to secure the scene.
Tensions have heightened among Kirkuk's mixed population of Kurds, Arabs and Turkomen as the city's Kurds are seeking to annex the oil-rich city to the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq.
Source: Xinhua
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