36 killed, 53 wounded in violent attacks across Iraq

Thirty-six people were killed and 53 others wounded in separate attacks across Iraq on Wednesday, police and medical source said. In Anbar province, two suicide bombers blew up their explosive- laden cars into two checkpoints at the entrance of a compound including Anbar Operations Command in the northern part of the provincial capital city of Ramadi, some 110 km west of Baghdad, a provincial police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. The blasts killed five soldiers and three policemen, and wounded seven others, the source said. In a separate incident, gunmen attacked a joint checkpoint of policemen and members of a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group in al-Houze district in central Ramadi, causing three policemen killed and two policemen and four Sahwa members wounded, the source said. Near Ramadi, a suicide bomber blew up his explosive vest at an army checkpoint in al-Jazeera area, just north of Ramadi, and killed four soldiers and wounded two others, the source added. Separately, 16 civilians were killed and 19 wounded during the past 24 hours by airstrikes and artillery shelling on several neighborhoods in the besieged city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, a medical source from the city hospital told Xinhua. Anbar province has been the scene of fierce clashes that flared up after Iraqi police dismantled an anti-government protest site outside Ramadi late last December. In Baghdad, several mortar rounds landed on an army base in the northern suburb of Sabi al-Bour, leaving two soldiers killed and ten others wounded, a police source anonymously told Xinhua. Also in Sabi al-Bour suburb, a roadside bomb ripped through a popular market, killing three civilians and wounding nine others, the source said.