Jan 8, 2004 - A car bomb exploded on Saturday at a petrol station near an Iraqi police and army checkpoint south of the Iraqi capital, killing at least four Iraqi civilians and injuring more than 20 others, police said.

The sources said that most of the casualties were queuing at the fuel station in the village of Mahaweel in the Babel province, some 80 kilometers south of Baghdad.

"The vehicle exploded near a service station at 8:00 am (0500 GMT)," a policeman said, adding that the explosion wrecked at least three vehicles.

The blast didn’t hurt any of the police or soldiers manning the checkpoint.

Police said that the blast appeared to target the gas station, although the motive was not clear.

Meanwhile, a powerful explosion rocked western Baghdad on Saturday, witnesses said.

But police said they had not found the exact location of the blast and that there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

One correspondent in the west of the capital reported that the huge explosion rocked houses in the area.

3 senior Iraqi officials kidnapped

Also Saturday, rebels abducted the head of the northern Salaheddin provincial council and two other senior assistants to the provincial governor on a road south of Baghdad, Iraqi police said on Saturday.

The three men were captured late Friday south of the Iraqi capital, while they were on their way to the town of Tikrit north of Baghdad, the sources said.

The dean of the Tikrit law college was also kidnapped.

Police said that the men were returning to Tikrit from the Shi'ite city of Najaf where they had been holding talks with Shiite officials to discuss the Iraqi elections, to be held by the end of the month.

They were traveling through the so-called "Triangle of death" when rebels stopped their car and seized them.