By Bobby Rajabi
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

RAMADI, Iraq – Twenty four people died on December 30 as the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province, Ramadi was rocked by a double suicide bombing. In addition to the dead, sixty people were wounded in the bombings. Among the wounded was the Anbar province’s Governor, Qassim Mohammed. Iraqi officials have described his condition as “very serious.”

According to Iraqi police, the first bomber was in a car while the second was on foot and wearing an army uniform. The first attack took place at 9:30am at a traffic junction near the provincial administration buildings located at the center of the city. A suicide bomber in a car triggered the first blast at a checkpoint on the main road.

The second bombing took place approximately thirty minutes later at a government building two hundred meters away. Mohammed was injured in this blast as he emerged from his office the inspect the damage from the first blast. The second attacker wore a suicide vest under what appeared to be an Iraqi army uniform and blew himself up as he ran into the crowd around the governor. According to a local police officer, Captain Ahmed Mohammed al-Dualimi, “some security people held him back, and he detonated himself.”

Initial reports on state television were that the governor had been killed in the second suicide blast, but they were quickly denied by his deputy, Hikmet Khalaf. The AFP quoted a doctor at the Ramadi General Hospital who said, “the governor is wounded. American forces came and took him for more treatment.” The US military did not immediately confirm the AFP’s report.

The recent attack appeared the mirror an October 11 triple bombing in Ramadi which killed nineteen people and injured more than eighty.

Anbar province was the center of Iraq’s Sunni uprising following the invasion of Iraq led by the United States in 2003. The province, however, had become relatively secure after tribal fighers accepted US support in 2006. There is a fear, however, that the recent attacks show that increase in violence is likely ahead of Iraq’s general elections in March 2010.

For more information, please see:

AFP – Twin Iraq Attacks Kill 23, Provincial Governor Wounded – 30 December 2009

Al Jazeera – Deadly Blasts Hit Western Iraq City – 30 December 2009

BBC – Deadly Double Blast Hits Street in Iraq City of Ramadi – 30 December 2009

New York Times – Bombs Kill 24 in Iraq and Wound a Governor – 30 December 2009