Police chief, 5 people wounded in car bomb attack in Iraq

A local police chief and five people were wounded in a car bomb explosion to the south of Baghdad on Saturday, a local police source said, Xinhua reported.

Lieutenant Colonel Salmam Kadhim, a police station chief, was badly wounded when a car bomb explosion hit his convoy in the town of Jbala, some 70 km south of the capital Baghdad, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Three of Kadhim's bodyguards and two passers-by were also wounded by the blast, the source said.

The town is part of the once restive area, dubbed Triangle of Death, which is a cluster of towns scattered between south of Baghdad and north of Hilla city, the capital of Babil province, some 100 km south of Baghdad.

In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, the Iraqi police captured three terrorist cells accused of carrying out attacks against politicians, security forces and civilians, Brigadier Jamil Abdullah the provincial police chief said in a statement posted on the website of the Iraqi Interior Ministry.

"All the captured culprits are officers of the former Iraqi army (under Saddam Hussien regime)," the statement said.

Iraqi cities have been plagued by several attacks, including suicide bombings, since the U.S. troops pulled out of the country earlier December, 2011.