BAGHDAD, (AP) – A roadside bomb targeting the police chief of a northern Iraqi town that is home to a large Shiite population killed 5 people on Tuesday, including the chief and four of his bodyguards, a police official said.

The 8 a.m attack in the town of Armili targeted a convoy carrying the town’s police chief, Maj. Zaid Hussein Khalaf, said Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qader of the police in Kirkuk, a city further north.

Armili, about 100 miles (165 kilometers) north of Baghdad, is a town with a population of 26,000, mostly Shiites from Iraq’s Turkoman ethnic minority. More than 100 people were killed in 2007 when a suicide truck bomber targeted a town market there.

Meanwhile, a Health Ministry official escaped an assassination attempt when a roadside bomb hit his convoy in the eastern part of Baghdad, but one ministry employee died in the blast, Iraqi police and health officials said.

Eight bystanders and four people in the convoy were also wounded in the attack that appeared directed at Dr. Ali Bustan al-Fartosi, who is in charge of eastern Baghdad’s medical facilities. The doctor escaped unharmed, the officials said.

The police official said it was not known why the doctor was targeted.

Also in Baghdad, two roadside bombs targeted two separate police patrols, injuring ten people including four policemen, police and health officials said.

All the police and health officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.