Bombs kill at least 10 in western Iraq

Al-Iraqiya state television initially reported that Qassim Mohammed, governor of the mainly Sunni Arab province west of Baghdad, was killed in the attacks near the provincial government headquarters in Ramadi, the provincial capital.

But Deputy Governor Hikmet Khalaf later said in a phone call to Reuters that Mohammed was still alive and had been taken to hospital.

Jassim Mohammed, who heads the Anbar provincial council, also said the governor was alive. State TV later ran a similar report from the provincial council head.

State TV also said a member of the provincial council and the deputy police commander had been killed in the blasts.

Police in Ramadi said the attacks took place in quick succession in the city, located 100 km (60 miles) west of Baghdad. Many of those wounded were from Iraqi security forces.

Police Colonel Jabbar Ajaj said the first blast, in which a suicide bomber detonated explosives in a vehicle, was followed shortly afterwards by a second suicide attack, this time carried out by a bomber on foot.

A source at the hospital said that, after the first attack took place near the provincial headquarters, the governor came out from his office to inspect the damage.

Then the second attacker struck.

One of the attackers was a man working as a bodyguard for the governor, Iraqiya reported. Police said that Mohammed seemed to be the target of at least one of the attacks.

Anbar, the heart of Iraq's Sunni Islamist insurgency following the U.S.-led ouster of Saddam Hussein, became a relatively secure place after local tribal leaders began to support grassroots guard units battling al Qaeda in 2006.

But a spate of recent attacks has raised fears that violence will increase further ahead of Iraq's general elections in March 2010.

(Reporting by Fadhel al-Badrani; additional reporting in Baghdad by Khalid al-Ansary; writing by Missy Ryan; editing by Tim Pearce)