Two suicide car bombers killed 25 people and wounded dozens more near Iraq's city of Ramadi today in separate attacks that police blamed on al-Qaeda.
The attacks were the latest in a succession of big car bombings across Iraq in recent weeks that have killed hundreds despite a major US-backed security crackdown in Baghdad and its outlying areas, including Ramadi.
Today's first bomb went off in a packed market at Albu-Thiyab, a town northeast of Ramadi, said Tareq al-Thiyabi, a police colonel and government security adviser in Anbar province.
Ramadi is the provincial capital. He said 13 people were killed at the market, including women and children. Nearly 20 people were wounded.
The second car bomb exploded soon after at a police checkpoint in a town called al-Jazeera, where 12 people including five policemen were killed, he added. More than 25 were wounded.
"They are terrorists. They are from al Qaeda," Thiyabi said, when asked who he thought was behind the twin blasts. The town of al-Jazeera is home to many Sunni Arab tribal leaders who formed an alliance against Sunni Islamist al Qaeda last year, opening up a fierce power struggle for Anbar.
The tribal chiefs oppose al Qaeda's campaign of indiscriminate attacks on civilians and the imposition of an austere form of Islam in the areas where the group holds sway in the vast desert region that stretches to Syria.