RAMADI, Iraq (Reuters) - Two suicide bombings ripped through the centre of a city in western Iraq on Wednesday morning, killing at least 10 people, including the provincial governor, and wounding at least 40, police said.
Police said the attacks took place in quick succession in central Ramadi, 100 km (60 miles) west of Baghdad. Many of the wounded were members of the Iraqi security forces.
Qassim Mohammed, the governor of Anbar province, home mainly to members of Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, was killed, along with a member of the provincial council and the deputy police commander, state television said.
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 in Ramadi hospital said that, after the first attack near the provincial headquarters, the governor came out from his office to inspect the damage. Then the second attacker struck.
Anbar, the heart of Iraq's Sunni Islamist insurgency following the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein, became
relatively secure 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 ahead of Iraq's general elections in March 2010.
(Reporting by Fadhel al-Badrani; writing by Missy Ryan; editing by Tim Pearce)
