Six killed in car bomb blast in Iraq
A car bomb explosion has struck the western Iraqi city of Ramadi in Anber province, leaving six people, including two traffic police officers, killed, reported Press TV.
The bombing targeted a check point in downtown Ramadi early on Wednesday and wounded 16 men, women and children, AFP cited police and medics as saying.
The attack comes two weeks after US withdrawal from Iraqi cities and towns under a security pact between Baghdad and Washington that requires Washington to pull out its troops from the Iraqi soil by the end of 2011.
Shortly before the US military's urban pullout, some six years after its invasion of Iraq in 2003, violence sharply rose with 437 Iraqis killed in June marking the bloodiest month in an almost a year-long period.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki also condemned the hiked violence ahead of the planned withdrawal as an attempt to "undermine confidence in Iraq's own security forces."
On Sunday, a senior US military official said despite the rise of violence in the last few days in Iraq, Baghdad has not called for US assistance in urban combat.
Baghdad, meanwhile, is taking measures to take full control of the country's security by the end of 2011, when under the security agreement all US forces should completely leave the oil-rich country.
