Iraq, March 15: A double attack Monday by a suicide bomber on a military checkpoint and group of labourers in the former Sunni rebel bastion of Fallujah killed seven people, police and medics said.
Twenty-nine people were wounded in the blasts, which occurred within minutes of each other at around 9:00 am (0600 GMT) in the centre of Fallujah, 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad, officials said.
Captain Bashar Mohammed, chief of a police station in Fallujah, said the bomber parked his explosives-packed vehicle near a military checkpoint in the centre of the city.
He then left it and walked into a group of labourers and detonated his explosives vest. The car bomb exploded shortly afterwards, although no soldiers were among the wounded.
“He blew himself up among a group of day labourers,” Mohammed said.
The casualty toll was confirmed by Ahmed Abdul Halim, a doctor at Fallujah General Hospital.
The security situation in Fallujah, once a hotbed of Sunni insurgency, has improved dramatically in recent years although militants continue to carry out sporadic attacks.
—Agencies