| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq |
| Iraq: Deadly car bomb hits western city |
| 2009-07-21 |
| [ADN Kronos] A car bomb in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi on Monday killed three people, including two policemen, security and medical officials said. It was the second attack in Ramadi in a week. The city is the capital of Al-Anbar province, formerly one of the centres of the Sunni insurgency. Four other people including two policemen were wounded in Monday's bombing, which struck near the provincial government headquarters in the centre of Ramadi, 110 km west of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. "A car rigged with explosives went off on Monday near an Iraqi police patrol on al-Kass street, central Ramadi, leaving two policemen killed and four others wounded," Raheem Zebin, the Anbar police information department chief, was quoted as telling the Voice of Iraq news agency. Last week, six people were killed in a suicide car bombing near a mosque in Ramadi. On Saturday, four people were killed and 10 others wounded in a series of bombing attacks in different areas of Al-Anbar. The leader of a local anti-Al-Qaeda tribal awakening council, Naeem Saleh al-Halbusim, was wounded and his son died in an attack in the city of Fallujah - a former Sunni insurgent stronghold. The Sunni tribal awakening councils have over the past few years been supporting American troops. They are are credited with helping to reduce insurgent activity dramatically over the past 18 months. In other developments over the weekend, Iraqi police said they had arrested a member of an Iranian-backed militia suspected of involvement in the killing of three US soldiers in a rocket attack near Basra airport last Thursday. Pan-Arab daily Al-Sharq-al-Awsat quoted unnamed sources in the Iraqi ministry of defence as saying an Al-Qaeda linked cleric, Khalad Abed, was arrested on Saturday in the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, together with the alleged head of a local suicide bombing cell, Jamil Ibrahim Muhammad. Monday's attack in Ramadi came just three weeks after US troops withdrew from urban centres as part of a controversial security pact signed last August between Baghdad and Washington. Under the pact, US troops are due to leave Iraq by the end of 2011. Violence decreased markedly throughout the country in recent months but attacks increased in the run-up to the US military pullback. A total 437 Iraqis were killed in June - the highest death toll in 11 months. |
| Posted by:Fred |