Two suicide car bombs kill 25 near Iraq's Ramadi

BAGHDAD, May 7 (Reuters) Two suicide car bombers killed 25 people and wounded dozens more near Iraq's city of Ramadi today in separate attacks that police blamed on al Qaeda.

The attacks were the latest in a succession of big car bombings across Iraq in recent weeks that have killed hundreds despite a major US-backed security crackdown in Baghdad and its outlying areas, including Ramadi.

Today's first bomb went off in a packed market at Albu-Thiyab, a town northeast of Ramadi, said Tareq al-Thiyabi, a police colonel and government security adviser in Anbar province. Ramadi is the provincial capital.

He said 13 people were killed at the market, including women and children. Nearly 20 people were wounded.

The second car bomb exploded soon after at a police checkpoint in a town called al-Jazeera, where 12 people including five policemen were killed, he added. More than 25 were wounded.

''They are terrorists. They are from al Qaeda,'' Thiyabi said, when asked who he thought was behind the twin blasts.

The town of al-Jazeera is home to many Sunni Arab tribal leaders who formed an alliance against Sunni Islamist al Qaeda last year, opening up a fierce power struggle for Anbar.

The tribal chiefs oppose al Qaeda's campaign of indiscriminate attacks on civilians and the imposition of an austere form of Islam in the areas where the group holds sway in the vast desert region that stretches to Syria.

TRIBE LEADERS PRAISED BY US The violence in Anbar came a day after eight American soldiers were killed in Iraq, including six who died along with a journalist in a roadside bomb attack north of Baghdad.

Russia's foreign ministry said it was checking reports that the journalist was a Russian photographer, spokesman Andrei Krivtsov said. Russia news agencies said the journalist worked for the Moscow-based PhotoXPress picture agency.

Recent big suicide attacks in Anbar, an overwhelmingly Sunni province west of Baghdad, have been blamed on al Qaeda.

Tribal leaders have sought to expel al Qaeda from Anbar, and have had some success, pushing some of the al Qaeda militants out, US military officials have said.

While car bombings still plague Anbar, and especially Ramadi, violence has fallen across the province, they say.

In Washington last month, the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, hailed the tribal leaders, saying they were ''helping transform Anbar province and other areas from being assessed as lost as little as six months ago to being relatively heartening''.

Thousands of extra American soldiers are being sent to Anbar as part of the push to try to secure Baghdad.

That offensive began three months ago and is seen as a final effort to halt Iraq's plunge into all-out sectarian civil war.

US military commanders say all 30,000 American reinforcements will be in place by June 1.

Reuters SYV VV17455