**A woman and child were among at least seven people killed when a car bomb exploded in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, police have said.**A high-ranking police official said the car was parked in a courtyard of a house at the time the bomb went off.
He said it appeared the bomb may have gone off prematurely as the car was being prepared for use in an attack.
At least one building collapsed completely in the blast, Reuters news agency reported.
Police and locals removed bodies wrapped in bed sheets from the rubble, the agency reported.
Tug of war
Kirkuk is an ethnically mixed city in the oil-rich north of the country.
It has been the subject of a tug of war between the Arab-led government in Baghdad and the autonomous northern Kurdish region.
Ethnic Kurds claim the northern city of Kirkuk and its resource-rich surrounds as their ancestral capital and want them to be incorporated into their enclave.
The move is fiercely opposed by the city’s Turkmen and Arab population.
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