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Suicide bomber in west Iraq kills 7, wounds 16

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-09-07 15:54

Police officers stand next to a vehicle used in a car bomb attack in Baghdad's Baladiyat district, eastern Baghdad September 6, 2009. [Agencies]

RAMADI, Iraq: A suicide bomber drove a car packed with explosives into a police checkpoint just outside the western Iraqi city of Ramadi on Monday, killing seven people and wounding 16, police said.

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Police Major Fawzi Hamad said three policemen were among the dead. The others were civilians.

Once the heartland of a Sunni Arab insurgency, western Iraq's Anbar province has been relatively quiet since tribal sheikhs teamed up with US troops to drive out al Qaeda in late 2006.

But sporadic attacks continue in the vast desert province, which shares a border with Syria, from where Iraq's government says many foreign jihadists enter Iraq.

A series of bombings in Anbar in July prompted Iraqi security forces to declare a state of emergency there. A car bomb in Anbar killed six on August 2.