BAGHDAD, June 29: A car bomb in the central Iraqi town of Dhuluiya on Sunday killed at least seven policemen and wounded two more, the town’s police chief said.

An Iraqi official, meanwhile, said the US-led coalition was set to hand over security control of Diwaniyah on Monday, the 10th of Iraq’s 18 provinces to be taken over by local forces.

Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Khalid of Dhuluiya police said the car bomb went off at around 7:30 am (0430 GMT) in the town 70 kilometres north of Baghdad in Salaheddin province.

“The police received a call that there was an abandoned car on a road. A team of policemen went to check and, as they reached the car, it exploded,” Khalid said.

The attack came after the Salaheddin authorities gave insurgents until July 8 to surrender to US and Iraqi forces.

Last month, around 500 combatants turned themselves in as part of a national reconciliation programme, and the American military has said it expects another 500 insurgents to give up their arms in Salaheddin.

The province has been a hotbed of the Sunni Arab insurgency that has gripped Iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003. The provincial capital Tikrit was the hometown of executed dictator Saddam Hussein.

In Baghdad, gunmen shot dead the head of police intelligence for the main southern city of Basra, Brigadier General Jabbar Musaid, as he was on his way to meet relatives, security officials said.—AFP