Bombs In Iraq's Falluja Kill One, Wound 27
July 25, 2009
FALLUJA (Reuters) -- Two bomb attacks in Iraq's western Anbar Province killed one person and wounded 27 others on July 25, police said.
The first bomb exploded in a truck parked near offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party office, an influential Sunni Arab political group, in the city of Falluja, followed by a second bomb that went off in a car parked on a road leading from the party offices to a local hospital, police said.
The driver of the truck was killed in the blast as he attempted to get out of the vehicle, police said. Police opened fire on the second vehicle as it approached them, killing the driver and triggering explosives inside.
Police said they expected the toll to rise in the bombings, which were the largest attack for several months in Falluja, some 50 kilometers west of Baghdad.
Anbar had been relatively quiet since Sunni Muslim tribal leaders in 2006 turned on Sunni Islamist groups like Al-Qaeda, who had once dominated the vast desert province, but violence appears to have escalated in the region in recent weeks.
On July 21, Iraqi officials declared a rare vehicle ban across Anbar, Iraq's largest province, after two bomb attacks killed three people in the provincial capital Ramadi. A day earlier, an explosion killed two policemen in the city.
The Iraqi Islamic Party is the main political party in parliament representing the country's once dominant Sunni minority.