Five people were killed and ten wounded in a car bomb explosion in a town in Salahudin province north of Baghdad on Wednesday, a provincial police source told Xinhua.

The booby-trapped car went off when a team of police explosive experts were defusing a roadside bomb nearby in the town of al- Duluiyah, some 90 km north of Baghdad, the source from Salahudin's operations command said on condition of anonymity.

All the victims were civilians who gathered to watch the defusing of the roadside bomb, the source said.

The blast damaged several nearby civilian cars, shops and houses, the source added.

Salahudin province is a Sunni-dominated province. Its capital city of Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, is the hometown of former President Saddam Hussein.