BAGHDAD, July 16: At least 85 people were killed on Monday by a suicide truck bomb in the volatile Iraqi city of Kirkuk, some of them trapped on a bus where they burned to death, a witness said.

Police also said 180 people were wounded in a blast that heightened tension in the oil-producing northern city, shared by Kurds, Turkmen, Shias and Sunni Arabs. The city plans to hold a crucial referendum later this year on its future status.

“Tens of houses and shops were totally destroyed by the power of the explosion,” said General Torhan Abdul Rahman, the city’s deputy chief of police.

Dozens of cars were set on fire and Reuters pictures from the scene showed a number of charred and torn bodies in the bus and a large crater in the road where the truck blew up. A police pick-up was splattered with blood.

The blast, near an office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, was one of several attacks in Kirkuk, which is supposed to vote to decide the status of the city later this year. Police said there were at least 25 critically injured and many bodies might still be buried in the rubble.

The truck detonated minutes apart from a car bomb in a busy Kirkuk shopping area that wounded two people, police said.

A police officer was killed and four officers were wounded soon after, when a parked car bomb exploded in southern Kirkuk, police said. A fourth car bomb was discovered and made safe.

South of Baghdad, thousands of US troops swooped on a suspected al Qaeda in Iraq safe haven, the military said.—Reuters