20 people were killed and over 60 others wounded on Tuesday in a car bomb explosion at a crowded marketplace in central Iraq. (Reuters Photo)

TIKRIT, Iraq, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- Up to 20 people were killed and more than 60 wounded on Tuesday in a car bomb explosion at a crowded marketplace in northern Iraq, a local medical source said.

"We have 20 people killed and more than 60 others wounded by the blast in the crowded vegetable market in Tuz-Khurmato," a medical source in the city told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The blast took in the afternoon when a booby-trapped KIA truck carrying vegetable detonated at the popular vegetable market in al-Askari neighborhood in Tuz-Khurmato, which located some 90 km east of the provincial capital city of Tikrit, a provincial police source anonymously told Xinhua.

Earlier, the police source put the toll at 15 killed and some 40 others wounded by the huge car bomb explosion.

The ethnically-mixed city of Tuz-Khurmato is mostly made up of Turkoman Shiite as well as sizable Kurdish and Sunni Arab population.

Previously, the city witnessed repeated clashes between the Kurds and Shiite militias, as the city and surrounding areas are part of the disputed areas outside the Kurdistan region.

There is also a conflict of Sunni Arabs against Shiite Hashd Shaabi brigades, or against Peshmerga.

The disputed areas are claimed by the Kurds and both Arabs and Turkomans. The Kurds want to incorporate the areas on the edge of their Kurdistan region, but their move is fiercely opposed by Baghdad government.

On Oct. 16, the Iraqi security forces fully redeployed in the city after the withdrawal of Kurdish Peshmerga forces, as the same day when the Iraqi forces redeployed on the nearby oil-rich province of Kirkuk.

The bomb attack in the city came as tensions are running high between Baghdad government and the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan after the Kurdish region held a controversial referendum on independence of Kurdistan and disputed areas.