BAGHDAD: Officials say a car bomb explosion in central Iraq has killed three people and wounded 16 others.

A police officer says a suicide car bomber drove his explosive-laden car on Sunday morning into a police check point in the town of Khalis, killing two civilians and one policeman. He added that 16 other people were wounded.

A medical official in a nearby hospital confirmed the causality figures. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to release information.

Khalis, a former stronghold of Sunni insurgency, is located about 80 kilometres north of Baghdad.

Almost one year after the last US troops left Iraq, Al Qaeda’s local wing has vowed to revive attacks against the country’s Shi’ites in an attempt to reignite the kind of sectarian violence that drove the country to the edge of civil war four years ago.

On Saturday at least seven Shiite pilgrims from Iran and Pakistan were killed when a car bomb went off by a restaurant in a city north of the capital.

Police said a parked car blew up near a restaurant on the outskirts of Balad, 80 km  north of Baghdad, killing the pilgrims, who were travelling back to the capital from the city of Samarra.