Suicide bomber kills 14 people at Anbar refugee camp: official

Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Fourteen people were killed at a refugee camp in Anbar when a suicide bomber blew himself up, a local official said.

Hussein Kassar, a security adviser to Anbar’s province council, said those killed in the camp at the 60 kilometer region, west of the city of Ramadi, included women, children and a police officer.

Thirteen others were wounded in the attack, including two officers, according to Kassar.

According to a monthly casualty count released by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), a total of 411 civilian deaths was counted during June, besides 294 injuries.

There are more than four million civilians displaced since the emergence of the Islamic State in 2014, according to Iraqi and United Nations estimates.

Anbar’s western towns of Annah, Qaim and Rawa have been held by the extremist group since 2014, when it emerged to proclaim a self-styled Islamic “Caliphate”. The border area between Anbar and Syria has seen occasional bloody attacks against security forces over the past months, but Iraqi paramilitary forces continue advances to impose control over that region.

Fighter jets from the Iraqi army and the U.S.-led international coalition have also regularly pounded IS locations in the province. The Iraqi government is expected to aim at those strongholds once its campaign in Mosul, now in its eighth month, is concluded.