...

Trio of blasts strikes Iraqi city (UPDATE)

Arab World Materials 11 October 2009 20:02 (UTC +04:00)

Three blasts have rocked the Iraqi city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, killing at least 22 people and wounding 61, police have told the BBC.

A car packed with explosives ploughed into a concrete wall at the police headquarters. A motorcycle bomb then went off among the crowd that gathered.

The third blast, an apparent car bomb, went off outside the main hospital.

A curfew has been imposed in Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, which was once a centre of the Sunni insurgency.

Eyewitness Musaab Ali Mohammed said he was buying cigarettes near the police headquarters when he heard a big explosion.

"I saw police cars and firefighters, and they started to carry out the wounded and dead. Minutes later, a second explosion took place," he told the Associated Press news agency.

"After that, policemen started to fire in the air and called upon civilians to leave, fearing a third blast," the eyewitness added.

Anbar has been relatively stable since Sunni fighters turned against al-Qaeda and joined forces with the US and Iraqi security forces.

But recent weeks have seen a series of attacks on police and Iraqi army checkpoints in Anbar.

On Tuesday, a car bomb killed at least nine people in a market in Falluja. A day earlier, a suicide bomber killed six mourners at a funeral in Haditha.

The dead and injured in the latest attacks include both police and civilians.

Latest

Latest