15 killed in Iraq attacks, clashes

At least 15 people, including eight Al Qaeda militants, were killed and eight wounded in clashes and attacks in Iraq's Anbar province and near Baghdad Thursday evening, police said.

A police commando force fought a fierce clash with Al Qaeda militants in a desert area near the town of Khaldiyah, some 80 km west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, killing eight militants and destroying three of their vehicles, a provincial police source told Xinhua.

Also in Anbar, a car bomb detonated near the house of Sheikh Zamil al-Ghanimi, a tribal leader and a leader of a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group in Al-Soufiyah district in the northeast of the provincial capital city of Ramadi, some 110 km from Baghdad, killing a civilian and wounding twos, the source said.

Meanwhile, an army force chased three gunmen carrying roadside bombs in their car and shot them dead in Abu Ghraib area, some 25 km west of Baghdad, a local police source said.

Earlier in the evening, a provincial police source told Xinhua that three police commandos were killed and six wounded when a suicide bomber blew up his explosive-laden car near a crowd of members of a Special Weapons and Tactics force in Al Soufiyah district in Ramadi.

Earlier Thursday, Anbar province has been the scene of sporadic fierce clashes that flared up after Iraqi police dismantled an anti-government protest site outside Ramadi in late December.