The parked car exploded around 4 p.m. as a convoy of the state-owned Northern Gas Company was passing by, said police spokesman Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir.
All the dead were members of a government security agency that provides guards to the gas company. The wounded included 13 guards and eight civilians, Qadir said.
One of the wounded guards from the convoy, Salman Hadi, 38, said the group was returning home when the blast occurred, hurling him from the vehicle.
"When I looked up around me, I saw two bodies of my friends," Hadi said from his bed at the Kirkuk Hospital.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack. Al-Qaida and other extremist groups operate in northern Iraq and have all used car bombings as a tactic.
Last December a suicide bomber killed at least 55 people in a packed restaurant near Kirkuk where Kurdish and Arab leaders were trying to reconcile political differences.
Kirkuk, located 180 miles (290 kilometers) north of Baghdad, and the surrounding Tamim province did not take part in provincial elections in January because of the simmering tensions and because the different ethnic groups could not agree on a power-sharing formula.
Kurds make up an estimated 52 percent of Kirkuk's population. Arabs represent 35 percent. Turkomen, ethnic Turks with close ties to Turkey, make up about 12 percent.
The Kurds' concerns are partially rooted in the community's experience under Saddam Hussein, when tens of thousands of them were killed, and more than 1,100 of their villages were razed as part of a campaign to move Arabs into the area.
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Associated Press Writer Yahya Barzanji contributed to this report from Sulaimaniyah.
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