A car bomb exploded next to a football pitch in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi on Tuesday, killing 18 children aged between 10 and 15, an Iraqi defence official told the media.
The car was parked near the pitch and detonated as the youngsters played nearby, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity a day after a suicide car-bomb attack blamed on al-Qaeda killed 15 people in the same city.
About 20 more children were wounded in the latest attack in the restive western city, a hotbed of the anti-United States insurgency, which is also fast becoming a battlefront between rival Sunni factions, the official said.
For a long time after the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, much of the mainly Sunni population of Anbar Province tolerated or actively supported insurgent groups fighting the occupying army and the new Iraqi government.
Late last year, however, a coalition of powerful Sunni tribal sheikhs decided to change sides and actively fight al-Qaeda and foreign-influenced movements, including by sending young men to join the police.
This decision appears now to have triggered a bloody response.
On Saturday a fuel tanker rigged with explosives detonated outside a local mosque in Habbaniyah, outside Ramadi, killing 56 people, and on Monday a car bomb demolished a police station in the city, leaving 15 dead. — AFP
