A car bomb exploded on Monday in a busy area of the Iraqi city of Baquba, killing at least 10 people, a senior military official and a doctor said.

"A car bomb went off in the Shifta area of central Baquba, killing 10 people and wounding 35. This is an initial toll," a lieutenant colonel in the regional operations command said.

A doctor at Baquba hospital and a police captain gave the same toll.

Shifta is a busy area in central Baquba, a city which is the capital of the province of Diyala and lies about 70 kilometres (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but all such bombings recently have been claimed by the Islamic State group that took over large parts of Iraq nearly two years ago.

Diyala province was declared "liberated" from IS in January 2015, but ending their open control of populated areas has not brought an end to attacks.

Baquba and other towns in Diyala province have been hit by a number of large bomb attacks carried out by the jihadists.

Diyala has also been the scene of deadly sectarian violence over the years, and some of the Shiite militia groups currently active in the area have been accused of abuses.

IS leader for Iraq's Anbar province killed in air strike: Pentagon
Washington (AFP) May 9, 2016 - A US-led coalition air strike has killed a senior Islamic State leader in Iraq's Anbar province, along with three other IS jihadists, the Pentagon said Monday.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said the May 6 strike near the town of Rutba -- deep in the Anbar desert -- targeted Abu Wahib, IS's "military emir" for the vast western province.

Wahib was "a former member of Al-Qaeda in Iraq who has appeared in ISIL execution videos," Cook said, using an acronym for the IS group.

"We view him as a significant leader in ISIL leadership overall, not just in Anbar Province," he added. "Removing him from the battlefield will be a significant step forward."

The men were traveling in a vehicle when they were hit. Cook provided no additional details and did not specify if a warplane or a drone had carried out the strike.

The killing of Wahib is the latest in a series of attacks on senior IS leaders in Iraq and Syria, where the jihadists still control huge tracts of land despite an intense US-led air campaign dating back to August 2014.

Some other recent targets include Suleiman Abd Shabib al-Jabouri, an "ISIL war council member," Abd ar-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli -- the IS group's second-in-command also known as Haji Imam -- and Omar al-Shishani, the man known as "Omar the Chechen," who was effectively IS's defense minister.

In February, US special operations forces captured Sulayman Dawud al-Bakkar, also known as Abu Dawud, who was described as a chemical weapons expert.

"Since the start of 2015, we've targeted and killed more than 40 high-value ISIL and Al-Qaeda external attack plotters. We have removed cell leaders, facilitators, planners and recruiters," Baghdad-based military spokesman Colonel Steve Warren wrote online last week.

Despite many significant coalition gains against the IS group, the jihadists still control the key cities of Raqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, and assaults to recapture the towns are not expected for months.