A suicide bomber driving a dynamite-laden truck destroyed a key bridge on Saturday on a highway used by the departing US military, while separate attacks killed nine Iraqis, most of them security force members, police said.
There were no casualties in the blast that destroyed the bridge outside the city of Ramadi, which is about 125km west of Baghdad, said a local police officer. The highway is used heavily by the US military to transport equipment out of the country, and is also a major roadway for civilian traffic.
The highway links Iraq to neighboring Syria and Jordan, where many Iraqis fled to escape sectarian violence.
Also on Saturday, an attack on an Iraqi army convoy just outside of the city of Fallujah killed four Iraqi soldiers and wounded 14, said a police officer in the city, which is about 65km west of Baghdad.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists.
A US military spokesman in Iraq’s Anbar Province, where both Ramadi and Fallujah are located, confirmed Saturday’s explosion on the highway bridge, which was close to two Iraqi military bases that host US troops in the area.
Lieutenant Colonel Curtis Hill said US forces have “previously used the bridge,” but he would not say what impact its destruction might have on US military convoys transporting equipment out of Iraq to meet US President Barack Obama’s deadline for a complete pullout of combat troops by next August.
The Anbar provincial police commander, Major General Tariq Yousif Mohammed, said that he believed the blast was aimed at Iraqis. Traffic in and around Ramadi was backed up after the early morning explosion.
“I don’t think the Americans were targeted by the blast,” he said.
Western Anbar Province was once a hotbed of Iraq’s Sunni-dominated insurgency and the scene of some of the most intense US fighting with militants. Violence subsided significantly after local tribes decided to align themselves with US forces instead of al-Qaeda.
Attacks have not been halted entirely. Last Sunday, 19 people were killed in a spate of coordinated car bombings across Ramadi, Anbar’s provincial capital, sparking fears of a reinvigorated insurgency that could destabilize Iraq before January’s crucial parliamentary elections.
The recent violence is sure to be on the agenda when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki travels to the US. The prime minister was to fly to the US yesterday morning, said an aide to the prime minister, Yasin Majeed.
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