Senior officer killed in car bomb attack in Iraq

 A police chief of a town in northern Iraq was killed in a bomb attack on Wednesday, the police source said.

In Kirkuk province, a roadside bomb struck the convoy of Colonel Hussien Ni'ma Hawas, a provincial police chief, while moving in southern the capital city of Kirkuk, a provincial police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Two of Hawas bodyguards were also wounded by the blast, the source said.

The attack is the eighth assassination attempt against Hawas, who heads the police forces in the mainly Sunni Arab town of al- Dibis in northern Kirkuk province, the source added.

The oil-rich Kirkuk province and its capital Kirkuk City, some 250 km north of Baghdad, are part of the disputed areas between the Kurds and both Arabs and Turkomans. The area has long been the hotbed of insurgency since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

In Baghdad, a senior Iraqi army officer escaped unhurt a car bomb explosion in al-Qahira district in northern the capital, wounding five people, an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua.

Violence in the country underscore the challenges that the Iraqi security forces are facing as they struggle to restore stability and normalcy in Iraqi cities about eight months before the departure of all American forces by the end of 2011.

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