A suicide bomber blew up a car in northern Iraq on Monday, killing two policemen and a woman, and wounding 100 other people, many of them schoolchildren, officials said.

The bomber struck at a police station in the town of Dibis, northwest of the ethnically divided oil city of Kirkuk, district official Abdullah al-Salehi told AFP.

Many of the wounded were pupils at an adjacent Kurdish girls' secondary school, Salehi added.

The blast hit at around 10:00 am (0700 GMT) when children were in class, a police officer said.

Dibis is part of a swathe of territory that the Kurds want to join to their autonmomous region in northern Iraq, over the objections of Arab and Turkmen residents, and the central government in Baghdad.

Diplomats say the dispute poses the biggest threat to Iraq's long-term stability.

Violence has decreased from its peak in 2006 and 2007 when sectarian bloodshed raged between Sunni and Shiite Arabs.

But 10 years after the US-led invasion, attacks remain common, killing 220 people last month, according to an AFP tally based on security and medical sources.

Gunmen kill protest organiser in north Iraq
Kirkuk, Iraq (AFP) March 10, 2013 - Gunmen killed an anti-government protest organiser in north Iraq on Sunday, while a city council member and a farmer were shot dead in other attacks, police and doctors said.

Unknown gunmen shot dead protest organiser Bnayan Sabar al-Obeidi in front of his house in the northern city of Kirkuk, they said.

Protesters have taken to the streets in Sunni-majority areas of Iraq for more than two months, calling for Prime Minister Nuri Maliki's resignation and decrying the alleged targeting of their minority community by Shiite-led authorities.

Obeidi's death comes two days after activists said security forces fired on a demonstration in Mosul, another north Iraq city, killing at least one protester and wounding others.

Iraq's agriculture minister, Ezzedine al-Dawleh, resigned following the Mosul killing, saying that "there is no way I can continue in a government that does not respond to the demands" of the people.

He was the second minister from the secular, Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc, which is at odds with Maliki, to resign this month.

Also on Sunday, gunmen killed Abdul Monam Mohammed, a city council member in Heet, northwest of Baghdad, while other gunmen killed a farmer and a roadside bomb wounded three people near Baquba, north of the Iraqi capital, police and doctors said.

Violence in Iraq has decreased from its peak in 2006 and 2007.

But even 10 years after the US-led invasion of the country, attacks remain common, killing 220 people last month, according to an AFP tally based on security and medical sources.