BAGHDAD: A suicide bomber blew up his car Sunday outside government offices in a province west of the Iraqi capital, killing 17 people, including women and elderly people waiting to collect welfare checks, officials said. Six police officers were also among the dead in the latest strike on a favorite insurgent target, according to police and hospital officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media. At least 23 people were also wounded in Sunday's blast outside the provincial council compound in Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, according to the officials. "We rushed out of the office complex and saw many people injured and dead, lying on the street," said Anbar Deputy Gov. Saadoun Obeid, who was at his office when the explosion hit, touching off a fire in the compound. "I saw two women who were dead, their bodies burnt." Obeid said a traffic jam kept the suicide bomber from driving his explosives-laden car to the front gate. Eyewitnesses said the car exploded about 200 meters (220 yards) from the compound, creating a crater several meters (yards) wide. Officials immediately blamed Al-Qaeda in Iraq for the attack in Anbar, a former stronghold of Al-Qaeda militants and Sunni insurgents that stretches all the way from just west of Baghdad to Iraq's borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Police found a second bomb in a nearby parking lot a few minutes later, but said they detonated it in a safe area. The compound in Ramadi, 70 miles (115 kilometers) west of Baghdad, also houses the Anbar police headquarters and the governor's office. The chairman of the Anbar council, Jasim Mohammed Al-Halbusi, put the casualty count much lower, at eight killed and 12 wounded, but said the death toll likely would rise because many of the wounded were in critical condition. Obeid said as many as 57 people were wounded. Conflicting casualty tolls are common in the immediate aftermath of insurgent attacks in Iraq. Al-Halbusi said the dead and wounded were Anbar residents who had come to the office complex to fill out paperwork or receive government aid. "The bombing came after a period of calm in the province," Al-Halbusi said, blaming it on "powers of hatred who killed innocent civilians." Government officials in Anbar and across Iraq have frequently been targeted by insurgents since shortly after the 2003 US-led invasion led to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Last December, the Islamic State of Iraq, an Al-Qaeda front group, claimed responsibility for an attack on the same compound. That attack caused Anbar Gov. Qasim Al-Fahadawi to lose an arm and undergo leg surgery in the United States. Obeid said neither Al-Fahadawi nor many other senior Anbar officials were in the building during Sunday's strike. In July, a female suicide bomber blew herself up at a reception room outside Al-Fahadawi's office. Al-Fahadawi was not there at the time, but the blast coincided with a trip to Iraq by Vice President Joe Biden, undercutting his optimistic predictions of a peaceful transition of power as the nation was beset by political uncertainty. Nationwide, the deadliest attack on a government office this year occurred in August, when a suicide bomber blew himself up among hundreds of army recruits who had gathered outside the Baghdad headquarters of the Iraqi army's 11th division. The blast killed 60 people and wounded 125. The attacks highlight the persistent efforts by insurgents to undermine security in Iraq as US troops prepare to leave by the end of next year as part of an agreement between Washington and Baghdad. –AP reporters Barbara Surk and Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report.
