BAGHDAD (AP) - A suicide car bomber blasted an outdoor market Saturday in a northern Iraqi city, killing six people and wounding 54, police and hospital authorities said.

The attack in the mainly Turkomen city of Tal Afar took place one day after a suicide car bomber struck a convoy carrying ex-Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi in Baghdad. The former Pentagon favorite escaped injury but six people, including five of his bodyguards, were killed.

Saturday's attack occurred in the same Tal Afar market where a suicide truck bomber killed 28 people and injured 72 last month.

That raises questions about whether Iraqi police are capable of maintaining security in the strategic north - where al-Qaida in Iraq remains active - as the Americans hand over more responsibility for security to Iraqi soldiers and police.

Police said the bomber detonated his explosive-laden car near a crowd of people gathered around a traffic accident in the market, which was crowded with shoppers buying food for the traditional evening meal that breaks the daily fast in the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Elsewhere in the north, Kurdish security forces raided a house in Irbil province, killed a suspected member of an al-Qaida front group and captured a 17-year-old girl wearing an explosives vest, provincial police said.

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