Monday, September 7, 2009

Police officials have said that a suicide car bomber has killed seven people and injured a further fifteen at a western Iraq security checkpoint.

The bomb detonated in a vehicle in a line of cars waiting at the checkpoint near the western city of Anbar early on Monday.

At least three police officers were among the casualties from the blast.

Farmer Mohammed Hussein Alwan, a witness to the event, was riding in a vehicle a few hundred metres from the suicide bomber’s car when it blew up.

“I ran to the site and saw five burning cars and a child who was thrown by the explosion and landed on the top of a car. I tried to approach him to see whether he was alive or dead, but the police started to open fire in all directions and we had to run away,” he said to the Associated Press news agency.

Violence in Iraq has decreased somewhat since 2008, but has picked up again recently, following the withdrawal of US armed forces from large cities across the country in June.