The violence comes two weeks ahead of a deadline for premier-designate Nuri al-Maliki to form a cabinet in a bid to end months of government impasse, and days before the climax of the Shiite commemoration of Ashura.

In the western city of Ramadi, a suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives near Anbar provincial government offices, killing 11 people, including six policemen, a doctor said.

"Lots of people were waiting to go into the governorate building when the car exploded close to the checkpoint," said Ahmed al-Dulaimi, a police officer who suffered a leg injury in the attack.

"I saw bodies blown into the air, people were screaming, others were running in all directions," the 30-year-old said from Ramadi hospital where he was being treated.

The blast occurred at a police checkpoint in the centre of the city, 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Baghdad, and left 41 people wounded, according to police Major Rahim Zabin and a hospital doctor.

The force of the explosion destroyed three cars and left a crater two metres (six feet) across, an AFP journalist at the scene said.

"A suicide car bomb targeted a police checkpoint in the centre of the city, about 200 metres (yards) from the Anbar government offices," Zabin said.

A doctor at Ramadi hospital, who spoke on condition of anonymity, put the toll at 11 dead and 41 wounded.

Among the dead were six police officers and a cameraman for local satellite television channel Al-Anbar TV, 24-year-old Omar Rassim al-Qaisi. A woman was also killed in the blast, while women and children were among the wounded.

Zabin, however, put the death toll at eight, including the six police.

"Me and 30 others were thrown to the ground by the explosion," said Ali Mahmud, a 45-year-old civil servant. "I was lucky, though -- I've only been wounded by shrapnel, while others lost an arm or a leg."

Ramadi is the capital of the predominantly Sunni Arab province of Anbar, Iraq's largest by area.

The province was a key Sunni insurgent base in the years after the 2003 US-led invasion, but since 2006 local tribes have sided with the American military and day-to-day violence has dropped dramatically.

Major attacks do still take place, however.

On February 18, a suicide bomber killed 10 people, including four policemen and a young girl, and wounded 15 in an attack on a checkpoint near the city's provincial government offices.

In the ethnically mixed city of Baquba, capital of Diyala province to Baghdad's north, three people were killed as a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden vest near a Shiite procession, said police Major Furat al-Dulaimi.

As emergency services rushed to the scene, a second roadside bomb detonated, wounding seven people, including four policemen. Diyala federal police chief Colonel Raghib al-Umeri was among the wounded.

It came as Shiites from around the world descend on Iraq for the commemoration of Ashura, which marks the slaying of the revered Imam Hussein by the armies of the Sunni caliph Yazid in 680.

Every day, thousands of pilgrims, many from Iran and other countries with large Shiite populations, visit Karbala and Iraq's other major Shiite shrines in Samarra, Najaf and Baghdad.

That number rises dramatically for Ashura as millions of pilgrims travel -- many on foot -- to Karbala, the home of shrines to Imam Hussein and his half-brother Imam Abbas.

According to the calculations of Iraq's top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Ashura is to climax this year on Friday.

Though attacks remain common, violence has dropped dramatically since its peak in 2006 and 2007. The number of people killed in violence across Iraq last month was the lowest in a year for the second month running.

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