A female suicide bomber killed four people and injured 23 in an attack on a government building in Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's western Anbar province. Councilman Aeefan Sadoun said the attacker detonated explosives strapped on her body in the reception room of the provincial government headquarters.
In Mosul, Iraq's third largest city and a northern stronghold of Al-Qaeda, police shot a suicide bomber near the provincial government's headquarters, although the bomber still managed to detonate his explosive belt, a US
military official with knowledge of the incident said.
Iraqi police said two policemen were wounded in the blast.
The attacks come as Vice President Joe Biden was meeting with Iraqi officials in Baghdad.
The targeting of government offices is a hallmark of Al-Qaeda in Iraq which may be looking to use Biden's visit and the US Fourth of July holiday as a reminder of Iraq's continuing instability.
Also on Sunday, a prominent Sunni official was injured in what police said was an assassination attempt in Kirkuk.
Mulla Mustafa Hussein, the head the Sunni Endowment in the northern city was leaving his office when an explosives-laden car exploded next to his convoy, said Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qadir. Hussein's three bodyguards and eight civilians were also injured in the Sunday afternoon blast, he said.
Whether Iraq's ongoing political instability would lead to violence has been a concern since the March election, when the Shiite prime minister's State of Law coalition narrowly lost out to Allawi's Sunni-backed Iraqiya alliance, 89 seats to 91.
That left both groups far short of the 163-seat majority needed to govern outright.
