BAGHDAD, December 31 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Five people were killed and dozens more wounded Wednesday, December 31, when a protest by Arabs and Turkmen against Kurdish bids to dominate the ethnically-split oil hub of Kirkuk turned violent, reported Al-Jazeera television.

However, Agence France-Presse (AFP) put the death toll at only three, quoting the Kirkuk General Hospital director.

Dr. Hashem Mohammed said two people died on arrival at the hospital, while a third died later of his wounds.

A total of 31 people were wounded, five of them seriously, he added, noting doctors were operating on the most serious casualties who were wounded in the head, abdomen and heart.

One of the wounded, Ali Hussein Mohammed, 19, said from his hospital bed that Kurdish fighters - peshmergas - opened fire at thousands of Turkmen and Arabs protesting a push by the city's Kurdish majority to incorporate the oil-rich center into the autonomous Kurdish province of Kurdistan.

"Kirkuk, Kirkuk is an Iraqi city. No to federalism," the protesters chanted.

Police said peshmergas opened fire on the demonstrators, who appeared to have come from outlying towns around Kirkuk to join the rally near a police academy on the southern edge of the city.

"The demonstrators, most of them Arabs and Turkmen, were grouped in front of the government offices to protest against the proposal for federalism when the peshmergas, based in the area, opened fire on the crowd," police colonel Salem Taleb Tahar said.

Jalal Jawhar, Kirkuk head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of two main Iraqi Kurdish factions, argued that a group of Arab and Turkmen protesters opened fire on PUK offices, wounding three members of Kirkuk's largely Kurdish police.

The demonstrators took their way to the PUK offices, where a number of American troops were, Al-Jazeera said.

But there are no immediate reports that the U.S. troops were targeted by the protesters in light of rising anti-American sentiments in the turbulent area.

Representatives of firebrand Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr, backing the Turkmen, were present at the rally, which U.S. forces monitored briefly before withdrawing, Reuters said.

Sadr had repeatedly called for driving the U.S. forces out of the occupied country which still suffers from lack of security and rampant violence.

Kirkuk, a volatile mix of Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen, has previously avoided serious confrontation, thanks to a council representing all of the city's communities, with a Kurdish mayor and Arab deputy.

But after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and Kurdish efforts to help U.S. forces overthrow the former regime of Saddam Hussein, there were rife reports that Kurds would be rewarded by their long-sought dream of federalism.

Kurds on the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Interim Governing Council are proposing that a future, federal Iraqi government grants broad autonomy to the northern zone, with Kirkuk as its capital, and a say over other areas with large Kurdish populations.

That plan is bitterly opposed by Turkmens and Arabs in Kirkuk, but Kurdish leaders Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani are pushing the council to recognize their vision of a federalist state well before the approval on March 1, 2004, of a Basic Law to govern Iraq during the transition period through 2005.

Draft legislation they have presented would give Kurds near autonomy in the three formerly rebel-held provinces of Arbil, Dohuk and As-Sulaymaniyah, as well as Tamim province around Kirkuk, and Kurdish areas of Nineveh and Diyala provinces.

In another development, an Iraqi child was killed Wednesday when a parked car exploded in central Baghdad as a U.S. military convoy drove by, an Iraqi security officer said.

Moving to southern Baghdad, the U.S. occupation soldiers confirmed two Iraqis were killed in an ambush attack on a British and Iraqi convoy two days earlier.

"A group of Iraqis and British personnel were attacked with small arms fire near Mahmudiyah.

"The engagement resulted in two friendly Iraqis being killed and two wounded," the military said.

In the meantime, a U.S. soldier was killed and another injured when a gun went off as another soldier was cleaning it, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

The incident happened late Tuesday at the Tanif border crossing with Syria when a soldier "was cleaning a weapon and it fired a chambered round", a military statement said.