Back-to-back suicide car bombs strike Kirkuk, killing at least 9 people and wounding 22

(AP) Two back-to-back suicide car bombs struck the northern city of Kirkuk on Sunday, killing at least nine people and wounding 22, while four more people were killed in a motorcycle bomb in southern Iraq.

The first car bomber smashed into a checkpoint about 7:30 p.m. outside the house of Peyrut Talabani, a cousin of Kurdish President Jalal Talabani, police Col. Sarhat Qader said.

Another car bomb exploded about 10 minutes later outside the home of Col. Ahmed Hamawendi, a commander of a local police station, Sarhat said. Hamawendi's house is about half a mile from Peyrut Talabani's.

Sarhat said nine people were killed and 22 wounded in the two explosions.

He said could not provide a breakdown for the two attacks because most of the victims arrived at the hospital at about the same time, but the casualties included Hamawendi's two policemen sons _ one who died and another who was injured.

Several car bombs have hit Kirkuk, the center of Iraq's vast northern oil fields, in recent months. Tensions have been rising in the city, 180 miles north of Baghdad, because the area's Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen all have rival claims to the region.

Peyrut Talabani is an official of President Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the main Kurdish political parties. The party office in Kirkuk was struck by a suicide truck bomber last month, killing five people.

The motorcycle bomb exploded in an open air night market in the southern city of Basra Sunday, killing four people and wounding 15, the governor's office said.

Basra, Iraq's second-largest city and the southern oil center, is 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.