SULAIMANIYAH: A police official said that a car bomb targeting a local judge killed two people and wounded 16 in a northern Iraqi city that is rife with ethnic tensions.    

Police Col Shezat Mofriee said that the Wednesday morning explosion went off just as criminal court Judge Aziz Ibrahim was arriving at his office near a police station in downtown Kirkuk, located 290 kilometers  north of Baghdad.

Mofriee said the judge and two of his bodyguards were among the wounded. Three policemen also were injured.

The explosions also set at least one shop on fireand knocked nearby people to the ground.

Kirkuk, some 290 kilometers north of Baghdad, is ethnically divided among Kurds, Arabs and Turkomen, each of whom claim the right to control the city and the oil-rich lands around it.