Baghdad - At least 25 people were killed and 64 wounded Saturday in two separate explosions in Baghdad and near Hilla.

Iraqi police also said they killed a senior al-Qaeda leader who had escaped Friday during a jail breakout in Ramadi.

At least 22 people were killed and 54 injured in a bomb attack on a Baghdad market, al-Iraqiya state television reported, citing an army spokesman.

The blast was in a busy used clothes market in northern district of Kadhimiya. Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency said the bomb had been hidden in a car.

VOI also reported that an Iraqi army major and two Awakening Councils members were killed, and 10 people including five soldiers were wounded while they were trying to defuse a roadside bomb in Bahbahani, north-west of Hilla city, capital of Babel province.

Police said al-Qaeda senior leader Emad Farhan was killed in a gunbattle with police in the western city of Ramadi.

He had been one of three senior leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq who escaped during a jailbreak at al-Forsan police station on Friday that left seven policemen and seven inmates dead.

The gunbattle took place in a cemetery in Iskan neighbourhood in Ramadi where Farhan and two other senior leaders had taken refuge, the Iraqi Buratha news agency reported.

Police arrested one of the two leaders in hiding while the other escaped, Buratha added. (dpa)