BAQUBA  - Six people were killed on Monday in two powerful bombings in the central Iraqi province of Diyala where thousands of Iraqi soldiers are hunting down Al-Qaeda fighters, officials said. One of the attacks was carried out by a female suicide bomber, who killed an Iraqi police officer and injured 17 other people when she blew herself up at a market in the provincial capital Baquba, hospital and police officials said. The woman activated the explosives at the entrance to a police post inside the market when a police officer wanted to search her, officials said. The policeman was killed while another 12 policemen and five civilians were injured, according to Omar al-Dulaimi, a doctor at the hospital in Baquba. Five Iraqi women were killed and three men were injured when a roadside bomb exploded next to their pick-up truck near Al-Wajihiyah, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) east of Baquba, a witness said. "We left this morning and four women were going to the doctor and one was going shopping in Al-Wajhiyah. Before we reached Al-Wajhiyah the bomb exploded," said 27-year-old passenger Shaalan Mutni Ahmed. Diyala province, and especially its capital Baquba has in recent momnths been the scene of intense violence, especially suicide bombings " many of them carried out by women. On July 29, some 50,000 Iraqi soldiers and police launched a major push against insurgents and Al-Qaeda jihadists in Diyala, which Iraqi commanders describe as Iraq's most dangerous province. A mixed region made up of Christians and Muslims, Diyala was once the granary of Iraq and the country's orange capital with its lush orchards. It is fed by the Euphrates and Diyala rivers.