RAMADI: The police chief of Iraq’s western Anbar province was fired on Thursday and authorities imposed a curfew in its capital Ramadi, after bombings killed 27 people and wounded the provincial governor, police said.
The dismissal of Maj. Gen. Tareq Yusuf appeared to reflect concerns about rising violence in Iraq’s Sunni Arab heartland before national elections on March 7. Two suicide bombers struck in rapid succession on Wednesday near a provincial government headquarters in Ramadi. Provincial authorities imposed a round-the-clock curfew in the city on Thursday, banishing people from the streets, except for emergencies, until further notice.
Anbar’s provincial council fired Yusuf as police commander for the province, Police Lt. Col. Jabbar Ajaj said.
“The decision came as a result of the attacks which took place yesterday,” he said.
But the Ramadi attacks, along with a roadside bombing that killed seven pilgrims in Khalis, north of Baghdad, on Wednesday, underscored the resilience of the Iraqi insurgency.
The Ramadi bombers appeared to target provincial Gov. Qassim Mohammed. Police said the first bomber detonated explosives in a vehicle and a second struck on foot. Mohammed was flown by US forces to Baghdad for treatment.
Sadoon Khraibit, a member of Anbar’s governing council, was wounded in the attack and later died in hospital, police said.The killings were designed “to shake stability and peace in the country and to spread fear and terror among the people, especially with the closeness of the parliamentary elections on March 7,” he said.
