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A third bomb nearby at a facility used by Kurdish security forces killed at least four more people, news agencies reported.

The suicide bombers' main target appeared to have been the local office of Masoud Barzani, the president of Iraq's semiautonomous northern Kurdish region. Kirkuk is about 180 miles north of Baghdad.

Tensions increased recently in Kirkuk, where government soldiers squared off with Kurdish militias, after Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki sought to consolidate his control over security there.

"This is a political explosion. Iraq is witnessing a political crisis that is being reflected on the security of the country and it's all because of the prime minister," Muhammed Kamal, the chief of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Kirkuk, said.

The attack took place on Atlas Street, one of the busiest thoroughfares in central Kirkuk.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but car bombs have frequently been used by Sunni insurgents. In Baghdad on Wednesday, gunmen killed three policemen at a checkpoint in the northeast of the capital, according to the police, and two women were killed in an attack west of Baghdad.

The attacks in Kirkuk came a day after a member of the Iraqi Parliament who was also the leader of a local council of the Sunni Awakening, an American-backed group of Sunni militias that switched sides to fight against al-Qaida in Iraq, was killed in a suicide bomb attack in Anbar Province.

The lawmaker, Efan al-Essawi, had escaped many assassination attempts before. In 2009, attackers placed a magnetic bomb on the armored car that he was using when he was a candidate for Parliament, the first attack on a candidate as those elections approached. He avoided serious injury in that episode.

The Kirkuk attacks the assassination Tuesday come as Iraq grapples with political turmoil. Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, has been accused of monopolizing power and marginalizing Sunnis ahead of provincial elections scheduled for April.