Iraq suicide car bombs kill nine

Two suicide car bombs have exploded in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing nine people and wounding 20.

A security official said the cars were queuing to enter the Green Zone when they exploded. Iraqi soldiers were among the casualties.

The heavily fortified Green Zone houses many foreign embassies and Iraqi government offices.

A BBC correspondent in Baghdad says these are the first suicide bombings in the capital this year.

Violence in Iraq has dropped significantly from the height of the insurgency five years ago, but almost daily shootings and killings still continue.

The attacks come amid preparations for an Arab summit in the international zone next month, though this is widely expected to be postponed because of the turmoil in the Arab world.

Syrian News Updates

Syrian forces kill 6 in mosque attack: residents

Syrian News Updates! Vice President Farouq al-Shara said Assad was committed to "continue the path of reform and modernization in Syria," Lebanon's al-Manar television reported.

A main demand of the protesters is an end to what they term repression by the secret police, headed in Deraa province by a cousin of Assad.

Authorities arrested a leading campaigner who had supported the protesters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. It said Loay Hussein, a political prisoner from 1984 to 1991, was taken from his home near Damascus.

Syria has been under emergency law since the Baath Party took power in a 1963, banning any opposition and ushering in decades of economic retreat characterized by nationalization.

Assad has lifted some bans on private enterprise but has ignored demands to end emergency law, curb a pervasive security apparatus, develop rule of law, free political prisoners, allow freedom of expression, and reveal the fate of tens of thousands of dissenters who disappeared in the 1980s.

He has emerged in the last four years from isolation by the West over Syria's role in Lebanon and Iraq and backing for mostly Palestinian militant groups.

Assad strengthened Syria's ties with Shi'ite Iran as he sought to improve relations with the United States and strike a peace deal with Israel to regain the occupied Golan Heights, lost in the 1967 Middle East war.

Limited economic liberalization in the last decade has been marked by the rise of Rami Makhlouf, another cousin of Assad, as a business tycoon controlling key companies.

Makhlouf, under U.S. sanctions for what Washington deems public corruption, has been a target of protesters' anger. They describe him as a "thief." He says he is a legitimate businessman helping to bring economic progress to Syria.

Baquba ambulance suicide bomber targets Iraq police

A suicide bomber has used an ambulance to attack a police compound in central Iraq, killing up to 12 people, reports say.

Many more were wounded in the attack in Baquba - the second targeting Iraq's security forces in two days.

On Tuesday, a suicide bomber killed some 60 people at a police recruitment centre in Tikrit, the hometown of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Violence in Iraq has ebbed in recent years, but deadly attacks persist.

Both Baquba - 65km (40 miles) north-east of Baghdad - and Tikrit are within what is known as the Sunni Triangle, a stronghold of Iraq's insurgency.

Most of those killed in Wednesday morning's attack were police, officials said.

A gunman stepped out of the ambulance, opened fire on guards at the entrance of the city's special security police centre, and then the vehicle was driven into the compound and detonated, reports said.

More than 60 injuries were reported, and more people are said to be buried under rubble after the explosion caused a building to collapse.

"There are more bodies buried in the ruins," a spokeswoman for Diyala's governor told Reuters news agency.

Iraqi police and army recruiting centres are often targeted by suicide bombers.

Overall violence in Iraq has fallen sharply since the height of the sectarian killings of 2006-07, but shootings and bombings remain a daily occurrence.

US forces formally ended their combat operations last August, ahead of a planned full withdrawal later this year.

Suicide bomber kills 42 police recruits in Iraq

A suicide bomber wearing a vest filled with explosives attacked Iraqi police recruits on Tuesday in former dictator Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, killing at least 42 and wounding over 100, officials said.

Ahmed Abdul-Jabbar, deputy governor of Salahuddin province, said the attack took place outside a police recruiting center where Iraqi men were lining up hoping to get a job.

"Who else would it be but al Qaeda, who keep on slaughtering us," said Abdul-Jabbar. "They are the terrorists."

Abdul-Jabbar put the death toll at 42. Raed Ibrahim, head of the health department in the province, said 45 were killed and more than 150 wounded, while Interior Ministry sources in Baghdad said 50 people had died.

A police source in the city, 150 km (95 miles) north of Baghdad, said the main hospital was overwhelmed. Mosques broadcast appeals for residents to donate blood.

"The hospital theater now is full of dead and wounded young people. Ambulances are still evacuating casualties," the police source said at the hospital, asking not to be identified.

A police spokesman said that, at the time of the attack, more than 300 people were standing in line with their documents, hoping to get a $500-a-month job as a police trainee.

"There were many killed and wounded. The place was full of dead and wounded guys," he said.

Overall violence in Iraq has fallen sharply since the peak in 2006/07 of the sectarian slaughter triggered after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. But shootings and bombings remain a daily occurrence.

Salahuddin province, home to Saddam's family, continues to suffer frequent attacks by suspected Sunni Islamist insurgents opposed to the Shi'ite-led authorities in Baghdad. Tikrit is primarily Sunni.

Insurgents have stepped up their assaults on Iraqi police and troops since U.S. forces formally ended combat operations last August ahead of a full withdrawal this year.

The assault in Tikrit was the bloodiest since Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki secured backing to form his second government in December. It includes the Sunni-backed Iraqiya alliance, which won the most parliamentary seats in an election last March.

Excluding Iraqiya would have angered the Sunni voters and could have led to a surge in violence.

A Salahuddin provincial council worker, Muhanad Abdulrahman, said he rushed out to a balcony when he heard there had been a bomb in the city center.

US soldiers killed in northern Iraq

Two US soldiers killed in northern Iraq shooting.

Two US soldiers have been killed and nine wounded in northern Iraq.

The US military says they were shot by a gunman dressed in Iraqi army uniform near the town of Tuz Khormato, 210km (130 miles) north of Baghdad.

The Americans were among a group of US soldiers meeting Iraqi security forces at an Iraqi army compound.

The killings are the first US military deaths since US President Barack Obama declared an end to US combat operations in Iraq on 31 August.

"Eleven US soldiers were engaged with small arms fire, killing two and wounding nine, inside an Iraqi army commando compound," a US military statement said.

"The event occurred at approximately 1550 local time (1250 GMT) when a person wearing an Iraqi army uniform opened fire on the soldiers. The assailant was shot and killed and the soldiers were medically evacuated," it added.

US military spokesman Major Lee Peters told the BBC it was not clear, at this stage whether the assailant was an infiltrator or a soldier. He added that there were no reports of Iraqi soldiers being wounded in the attack.

The last US combat brigade left Iraq nearly two weeks ago - well before the deadline set by Mr Obama to cut the number of US troops in Iraq below 50,000.

Those remaining US troops are focusing on supporting Iraqi forces, in what they call "advise and assist" missions.

Tuesday's shooting happened on just such a mission, the BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse in Baghdad reports.

And while the US military is calling this an isolated incident, and saying that joint missions will continue, the trust which has so painstakingly been built up between the Americans and their Iraqi colleagues is bound to be affected, our correspondent adds.

Bomb blast in Iraq

61 killed in Iraq bomb blast attacks.

At least 61 people were killed and more than 180 injured in a series of attacks across Iraq Wednesday, mainly bomb blasts targeting police stations.

A member of parliament for the Iraqiya List, a party headed by former premier Iyad al-Allawi, called for an emergency session of parliament in response to the blasts, which went off in 10 cities.

'The explosions today represent a major crisis in regards to security,' Falah Hassan Zaidan al-Haybi told DPA.

He said Iraqi government forces were not ready to take over security of the country, as US combat operations come to an end next week, amid assurances from Washington that the police were up to the task of protecting citizens.

The largest single attack of the day saw at least 20 policemen killed and 90 injured in the city of Kut, 170 km northeast of Baghdad, when a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden car into a police station.

In Baghdad, at least 14 people were killed and 42 injured when two car bombs exploded in different parts of the capital. Witnesses said four policemen were among the dead.

'Despite certain achievements, Iraqi security forces have not reached the degree of self-sufficiency in terms of arms and training,' military spokesperson Qasim Atta said.

Al-Haybi and other members of his party said insurgents were taking advantage of the political deadlock and growing frustration, as there is no clear central government in Iraq since the March 7 elections failed to produce an outright winner and coalition talks are stalled.

Qais Shadha al-Jibouri, a member of the Iraqiya List, escaped an assassination attempt in eastern Baghdad but a guard was hurt in the attack, the party reported.

Seven people were killed and 25 injured in another car bombing at a market in Karbala, an official said. The blast occurred near a police station in the city, which lies some 110 km south of Baghdad.

Other parts of Iraq saw smaller scale but still deadly bombings.

In Fallujah and Ramadi, major cities in the western Anbar province, at least eight people, including two children, died in several bomb attacks.

The area, once an Islamist militant stronghold, had experienced a period of calm but this year was again seeing a spike in violence.

The northern parts of the country also experienced attacks on security forces, with police stations and checkpoints in Baquba, Kirkuk, Mosul and Tikrit all sustaining lethal bombings and shootings. Police officers' homes were also blown up and destroyed.

In Hilla, south of Baghdad, a Shiite shrine was attacked by a bomb, leaving one person injured, and Basra also saw 11 injured in a bomb blast.

The strength of US troops in Iraq has now fallen below 50,000, the lowest level since the 2003 invasion. Combat operations are officially set to conclude at the end of this month with all US combat soldiers having already left the country last week. A full withdrawal is scheduled for 2011.

Suicide Bombing in Baghdad

Suicide attack kills Iraqi army recruits in Baghdad.

At least 51 people have been killed in a suicide attack on an army recruitment centre in Baghdad, officials say.

More than 100 were reported to have been injured in the bombing, in the centre of the Iraqi capital.

The attack comes as the US prepares to end combat operations in Iraq by the end of this month.

It also comes a day after one of the two main contenders in Iraq's March election suspended talks on forming a coalition.

Violence in Iraq is down from its peak during the sectarian conflict in 2006-2007, although the number of civilian deaths rose sharply in July.

Almost daily attacks on Iraqi forces and traffic police in Baghdad and Anbar province, west of the capital, killed some 30 people in the first two weeks of August.

Unemployment in Iraq stands at about 60% and people are desperate for jobs.

The attack happened in a busy area close to one of the city's main bus stations, our correspondent says, adding that the streets are full of people early in the morning, making it easy for a suicide bomber to pass unnoticed.

Severed limbs could be seen in the street, which troops cordoned off as Iraqis turned up to look for relatives.

The site of the attack used to be the defence ministry under former leader Saddam Hussein. It was converted into an army base and recruitment centre following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Some soldiers were reported to be among the victims of Tuesday's attack. Three men were injured when two small bombs exploded last week at the same site.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, although our correspondent says suspicion will fall on al-Qaeda in Iraq.

After a long lull, it has been much more active recently, possibly to coincide with what the Americans are calling the end of their combat operations in Iraq on the 31 August, he adds.

The recruitment centre takes in about 250 recruits every week as the Iraqi authorities try to boost their armed forces.

The US is to reduce its forces in Iraq to 50,000 at the end of this month, and plans to withdraw all troops from the country by the end of 2011.

The 50,000 that will stay until next year will help train Iraqi forces and support counter-insurgency operations, although they will be combat capable.

Iraq's top army officer recently questioned the timing of the pull-out, saying the Iraqi military might not be ready to take control for another decade.

Meanwhile, Iraqi politics has remained deadlocked five months after national elections, with no new government yet in place.

On Monday, the al-Iraqiya bloc that won the most seats in March suspended talks with the second-placed Shia-led bloc of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Al-Iraqiya, which is led by former prime minister Iyad Allawi and says it is non-sectarian, was upset by a TV interview in which Mr Maliki said al-Iraqiya represented the Sunnis of Iraq.

US mission in Iraq will end in this month

Obama told US mission in Iraq will end in this August.

President Barack Obama on Monday said America's commitment to Iraq is now changing from military to civilian efforts, even as he made it clear that US combat mission in the war-ravaged country will end as scheduled on August 31.

"Make no mistake, our commitment in Iraq is changing from a military effort led by our troops to a civilian effort led by our diplomats," Obama said, despite recent flare-up of violence in the country.

"Shortly after taking office, I announced our new strategy for Iraq and for a transition to full Iraqi responsibility. I made it clear that by August 31, 2010 America's combat mission in Iraq would end. That is exactly what we are doing as promised, on schedule," he said, adding that the US has closed or turned over to Iraq hundreds of bases.

We're moving out millions of pieces of equipment in one of the largest logistics operations that we've seen in decades, he said.

As president, Obama inherited a security agreement with Baghdad that calls for all US forces to pull out by the end of 2011. He has ordered the force to draw down to 50,000 by September 1.

The pullout confirmation comes amid an increase of violence in Iraq, with the Baghdad government releasing figures on Saturday that said 535 people died in July, including 396 civilians, 89 policemen and 50 soldiers.

That figure was the highest for a single month since May 2008 when 563 people were killed in violence.

"By the end of this month, we'll have brought more than 90,000 of our troops home from Iraq since I took office more than 90,000," he added.

"Today even as terrorists try to derail Iraq's progress because of the sacrifices of our troops and their Iraqi partners, violence in Iraq continues to be near the lowest it's been in years," Obama said.

Next month, we will change our military mission from combat to supporting and training Iraqi security forces and in fact, in many parts of the country, Iraqis have already taken the lead for security, he said.

As agreed to with the Iraqi government, the US will maintain a transitional force until the US removes all its troops from Iraq by the end of next year.

"During this period, our forces will have a focused mission supporting and training Iraqi forces, partnering with Iraqis in counter terrorism missions, and protecting our civilian and military efforts," Obama added.

There are still those with bombs and bullets who will try to stop Iraq's progress and the hard truth is we have not seen the end of American sacrifice in Iraq, he said.

Shia pilgrims - Iraq Bomb Blast

Bombings kill 40 Shia pilgrims in Iraq.

At least 40 people were killed and 68 injured in two bomb attacks Monday in the Shia holy city of Karbala as large crowds gathered for a religious ceremony, witnesses and doctors said.

In the first incident, a suicide bomber killed 18 people when he blew himself up in the middle of a large group of pilgrims. Minutes later a car bomb exploded some 300 metres away from the initial blast, killing at least another 22 people.

Both explosions took place some 4 km from the centre of the city located some 118 km from the capital Baghdad.

Hundreds of thousands of Shias are gathered in Karbala for the holiday of the Imam al-Mahdi. Some 30,000 security forces were also deployed to protect the pilgrims, the police said.

Earlier, at least four people were killed and 16 injured Monday in a suicide bombing near the Baghdad office of the Al-Arabiya satellite television station.

The bomber detonated a small explosives-laden truck belonging to a local telecommunications company in the al-Harithiya area of western Baghdad where the broadcaster is located.

Besides the suicide bomber, three security personnel and a woman who worked as an office assistant at the station, were also killed in the attack.

Salam al-Zawbaei, a member of parliament from the secular Iraqiya party who lives in the neighbourhood, was also injured by the blast.

"There was a huge explosion that shook the building and caused severe damage," Hayder Dekhel, an Al-Arabiya employee in Baghdad, told DPA.

Black smoke covered the area and billowed up to the sky after the 120 kg of explosives in the car ignited when the driver slammed the vehicle into a gate. The blast created a crater three metres deep and damaged the building and other vehicles in the area.

"The car was searched at one checkpoint but was allowed to move ahead," Qassem Atta, an official from the ministry, told Al-Arabiya TV. Atta said he had prior information that a branch of the Al Qaeda terrorist network had been planning to attack the television station.

The bomber's ID card was found at the blast site, showing that he was 28 years old, but police said that it might be a fake.

The vehicle used in the attack belonged to a local telecommunications company that is building a mobile tower in the neighbourhood.

According to witnesses, the small truck was initially searched when it passed in the early morning through a checkpoint, located about 100 metres away from the broadcaster's offices. The vehicle then left the zone but returned some hours later and was not thoroughly checked the second time it entered the sensitive area.

The driver told security officers that he had come back carrying "equipment for the tower", witnesses said.

Houses of several high ranking officials are located in the area of the attack. Also in the vicinity is the office of former prime minister Iyad Allawi, the head of Iraqiya, the parliamentary bloc which won the most seats in the March 7 elections.

Iraqi security forces sealed off the blast area, and movement in the city is slower than usual, residents reported.

In June, the Interior Ministry demanded the offices of the broadcaster in Baghdad be closed after receiving information that armed groups were preparing to attack Al-Arabiya.

The Saudi-owned channel and its staff had previously been targeted by insurgents and faced pressure from the government over its coverage of events in the country.

In 2008, Baghdad bureau chief Jawad Hattab escaped a car bomb attack after an explosive device was planted in his vehicle. In February 2006, Al-Arabiya correspondent Atwar Bahjat and two of her colleagues were kidnapped and killed north of Baghdad.

The pan-Arab channel was ordered to stop broadcasting from Baghdad for a month in September 2006 after the government accused it of inciting sectarianism and promoting violence.

Since the elections earlier this year resulted in an ongoing political stalemate in Iraq, the legislative body has only met once and a government has yet to be formed. The second session of the current parliament is due to convene Tuesday.

Fire in northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya

Hotel fire kills 30 in Iraq's Kurdish north.

A hotel in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya burned to the ground overnight, killing at least 29 people, including 4 Americans, according to a government official in Erbil, the provincial capital.

Another 20 people were injured, and the death toll could climb higher. The five-story hotel, the Soma, caught fire because of an electrical short, the government official said.

Sulaimaniya is 160 miles north of Baghdad, in the semiautonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, and some of the victims may have worked for foreign oil companies, The Associated Press reported. At least four children were among the dead, according to The A.P.

Iraq football stadium hit by deadly suicide bombing

Bomb blast near football stadium : Tal Afaf near Mosul of Iraq.

A suicide bombing at a football stadium in northern Iraq has killed 10 people and injured 120 others, police say.

An attacker detonated explosives hidden inside a vehicle at the entrance to the stadium in Tal Afar, a mainly Shia Turkmen town west of Mosul.

Witnesses said the blast was followed by at least one other. Some said up to three suicide bombers were involved.

Earlier, the militant umbrella group, the Islamic State of Iraq, warned Shias of "dark days soaked with blood".

"What is happening to you nowadays is just a drizzle," said Al-Nasser Lideen Allah Abu Suleiman, the group's so-called minister of war.

Abu Suleiman succeeded Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq who was killed along with ISI leader Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in a joint operation by US and Iraq forces in April.

No group has yet said it carried out the bombings in Tal Afar, but correspondents say the method was similar to past al-Qaeda attacks and the group remains active in the area.

"Many people were gathered to watch the match," Hussein Nashad, who attended the game, told the AFP news agency by telephone from a hospital in Tal Afar where he was being treated for shock.

"We heard a loud explosion and the people behind me shielded me from the shrapnel. I ran away, but then I heard someone shout 'Allahu Akbar', and then there was another explosion," he said.

Another spectator, Ali Jaafar, told the Reuters news agency: "Suddenly we saw a pick-up in the middle of the field. The players were suspicious so they ran and as expected it turned out to be a suicide car bomber. The spectators began to run away but two suicide bombers were in the crowd."

On Monday, more than 100 people were killed in a series of apparently co-ordinated attacks blamed on al-Qaeda and its allies.

Bomb Blasts in Baghdad

Bombs strike Baghdad apartment buildings, 39 dead.

At least five massive bombs hit apartment buildings across Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 39 people and wounding more than 130 in the latest sign Iraq's fragile security could dissolve in the chaos of the unresolved election.

It was the fourth attack with multiple casualties across Iraq in five days, a spate of violence that has claimed more than 100 lives since Friday. The attacks have spiked as political leaders scramble to secure enough support to form a government after the March 7 parliamentary elections failed to produce a clear winner.

Ayad Allawi, whose bloc came out ahead in the vote by two seats over Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's, said the political deadlock caused the recent wave of violence.

"This is blamed on the power vacuum, of course," Allawi told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday, saying "extreme forces" are trying to exploit the political uncertainty.

Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, an Iraqi military spokesman for Baghdad's operations command center, said the attackers detonated blasts using homemade bombs and, in one case, a car packed with explosives. He said there were at least seven blasts; the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said there were five.

"There are casualties, and we are counting them right now with the Health Ministry," said al-Moussawi, who blamed al-Qaida in Iraq insurgents for the explosions and said Iraq was in a "state of war" with terrorists.

He said most of the buildings are two stories, but one in the Allawi district downtown was five stories.

Police and medical officials said the death toll was at least 39, and that women and children were among the dead. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to release information publicly.

The explosions started at about 9:30 a.m. at a residential building in the Shula area of northwest Baghdad. Then a car bomb struck in an intersection about a mile away, damaging nearby buildings, police and hospital officials said.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the press.

A few minutes later, at 9:45 a.m. a bomb left in a plastic bag exploded at a restaurant in the Allawi district downtown, near the government's Culture Ministry. Dozens of people gathered at the bomb site in the hours after the explosion, digging through bricks in the hopes of finding survivors.

College student Ali Hussein, 22, was riding the bus to school when one of the Shula bombs exploded. He described "people running in different directions with fear."

"Cars began to collide with one another in street because of fear," said Hussein, who fled for home after the blast. "We saw a cloud of fire and black smoke raising from a building at the explosion site, and while we were terrified by this explosion, another one took place."

On Monday, a Shiite couple and four of their children were gunned down in their home outside Baghdad, while more than 40 were killed Sunday after suicide attackers detonated three car bombs near embassies in Baghdad. On Friday, gunmen went house-to-house in a Sunni area south of Baghdad, killing 24 villagers execution-style.

Many fear such violence and a drawn-out political dispute could allow insurgents to regroup in the political vacuum left after the elections.

Nearly a month after the national vote, Iraq still finds itself in a political deadlock.

Allawi's secular Iraqiya bloc won 91 of the 325 parliament seats to 89 for the mainly Shiite list of Prime Minister al-Maliki. But both parties are far short of the necessary majority needed to govern alone, which has forced them into bargaining with other smaller blocs to muster the support needed to form a governing coalition.

Suicide blasts in Baqouba

Iraqi police: Suicide blasts in Baqouba kill 30

A string of three deadly suicide bombings killed at least 30 people in the former insurgent stronghold of Baqouba on Wednesday, including a blast from a suicide bomber who rode in an ambulance with the wounded before blowing himself up at a hospital, police said.

The bombings — Iraq's deadliest in weeks — come as Iraq is preparing for March 7 elections that will decide who will oversee the country as U.S. forces go home and help determine whether Iraq can overcome the deep sectarian tensions that have divided the nation since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have warned repeatedly that insurgents were expected to launch such attacks in an attempt to disrupt the crucial vote.

Police spokesman Capt. Ghalib al-Karkhi in the capital of the volatile Diyala province said the blasts struck in quick succession in Baqouba, 35 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad, and also wounded 48 people.

First, a suicide car bomb targeted a local government housing office next to an Iraqi Army facility. Within minutes, another suicide bomber driving a vehicle struck the headquarters of the provincial council, al-Karkhi said.

A third suicide bomber, wearing an explosives vest, rode in an ambulance with the wounded to the city's emergency hospital as rescuers and victims from the first two blasts were being rushed in for treatment, he added.

Most of the victims came from the blast at the hospital, al-Karkhi said. Police later safely detonated a fourth car bomb about 220 yards (200 meters) from the hospital.

An official in the Diyala police department who did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media confirmed the death toll.

Insurgents often spread out bomb attacks as a way to maximize damage as rescuers and others rush to the scene to help or ferry the victims to hospital for treatment.

One witness in Baqouba described being thrown against a nearby wall by the first blast and said that immediately after the explosion, Iraqi security forces began firing their weapons. The witness said she hid in a nearby building, then when the situation appeared to have calmed down, went outside only to hear another blast go off seconds later.

"The place was covered with dust and the smell of TNT powder was all over the area, where panicked people were running and cars were colliding with one another," said the witness. She spoke on condition of anonymity out of security concerns.

The provincial police chief, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Hussein al-Shimari, was in the hospital at the time of the blast, but was unharmed, Al-Karkhi said.

Baqouba is a mixed Shiite-Sunni city and Diyala's provincial capital. Both the city and the province were flashpoints of the insurgency, although they have quieted since the height of attacks in 2006 and 2007.

Bomb blast in Ramadi Iraq : Qassim Mohammed killed

Deadly bomb blast in western Iraqi city of Ramadi.

December 30 2009 : 10 people killed in two bomb explosions in the central Iraqi city of Ramadi including Qassim Mohammed, the governor of Anbar province.

Up to 30 may have died in the attacks, which struck in quick succession in the same street in the provincial capital. Governor Qassim Mohammed was reported killed, although his deputy said he had only been wounded. Analysts have blamed recent attacks in Iraq on al-Qaeda trying to destabilise the country ahead of March elections.

Another 35 people were injured in the blasts on Wednesday. Police said the attacks took place in quick succession in Ramadi's downtown area and that many of the wounded were from Iraqi security forces.

The first attack at around 9:30am (06:30 GMT) at a traffic junction in the centre of the Anbar provincial capital. A separate bombing 30 minutes later at the entrance to the nearby provincial council offices.

It was in this bombing that Qassim Mohammed was injured as he came out of his office to inspect the damage, a source at the Ramadi hospital was reported as saying. State television briefly reported that the governor had been killed in the blast, but those reports were quickly denied by Hikmet Khalaf, his deputy.

Ahmed Rushdi, an independent journalist in Baghdad, told Al Jazeera: "There is now a curfew inside Anbar - [the roads] are only for police cars and ambulances. All the members of the council and the governorate have mild injures."

Anbar province was the heart of Iraq's Sunni uprising following the US-led invasion of Iraqi in 2003 but it became relatively secure after local tribal leaders began to support grassroots guard units in 2006.

But a spate of recent attacks has raised fears that violence will increase ahead of Iraq's general elections in March 2010.