Kirkuk, Sep 5 (IANS): Three car bombs ripped through Iraq's ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk Thursday, killing two people and wounding some 25 others, police said.

Two of the car bombs separately detonated in Wasity and Nasir districts in the southern part of Kirkuk, some 250 km north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The explosions, which killed two people and wounded 20 others, also damaged seven nearby houses and left several civilian cars charred, the source said.

Later in the day, a third explosion took place in the same city when a KIA pickup loaded with explosives went off at al-Askari district, wounding five people and damaging some nearby houses and cars, the source added.

Kirkuk is the capital of the oil-rich province of Kirkuk, which is part of the disputed areas between the Kurds and both Arabs and Turkomans. The Kurds want to incorporate the province into their domain, but their move is being fiercely opposed by the Baghdad government.

Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in recent years, which raises fears that the country is sliding back to full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.