Iraq’s Ramadi struck by suicide car bomb

Iraq’s Ramadi struck by suicide car bomb

Iraqi security forces stand guard at a checkpoint outside the presidential compound. (File photo: AFP)

 

Sunday, 30 March 2014

A suicide attack on Sunday killed at least three people and wounded five others in Ramadi, a city west of Baghdad, reported Al Arabiya News Channel’s correspondent.

The victims were killed after a suicide bomber detonated a vehicle packed with explosives on the Hauz Bridge, a major crossing used by civilians connecting the north and south of the city.

Ramadi originally had five bridges across the Euphrates River before a militant surge earlier this year.

But two are used exclusively by security forces, and two others -- including the Hauz Bridge -- have been damaged to the point they can no longer be used.

Civilians in Ramadi are now able to use only the Albu Faraj bridge in the north of the city.

Ramadi is the capital of Anbar province, a predominantly Sunni desert region in west Iraq that shares a border with Syria.

Elsewhere on Sunday, two police officers were killed by a roadside bomb that exploded near their car in Tikrit north of Baghdad. Like Ramadi, Tikrit's population is made up mostly of Sunni Arabs.

The attacks came just hours after militants killed seven soldiers at an army checkpoint overnight near the restive northern city of Mosul, Al Arabiya’s correspondent added.