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BAGHDAD - Iraqi police and a community leader said a bomb blast near a soccer field in the city of Ramadi today killed 18 people, mostly children, but the US military said it was unaware of such an attack.
Amid conflicting reports over what happened in the volatile western city, the US military said its soldiers had carried out a controlled explosion in Ramadi, also near a soccer field, that slightly wounded 30 people, including nine children.
"I can't imagine there would be another attack involving children without our people knowing," Major Jeff Pool said. The wounded had cuts and bruises, he said.
The US military often carries out controlled blasts in Iraq to destroy captured weapons or unexploded bombs.
Pool said the controlled blast in Ramadi was "stronger than we had expected". He said it was carried out in the courtyard of a building where bags of explosives had been found. Windows from a nearby building were blown out, causing the wounds.
US forces went to the site and helped evacuate the wounded, said Pool.
Two Iraqi police sources said 18 people had been killed in the blast they described. One, a colonel in Ramadi who declined to be identified, said a suicide bomber detonated a truck bomb.
He put the time of the explosion at about 5 pm The controlled US blast was at 5:34 pm, Pool said.
Tribal leader Hamid Farhan al-Hays from Ramadi told Iraqiya state television 12 children and six women were killed.
Hays blamed the blast on Sunni al Qaeda, which is involved in an escalating power struggle with Sunni elders for control of Anbar, a vast desert province that is the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq. Ramadi is the capital of Anbar.
"The groups which did this barbaric crime are al Qaeda," he said.
A truck bomb near a Sunni mosque in Ramadi killed 52 people on Saturday, a day after the mosque's imam had made a speech criticising al Qaeda, which is entrenched in the area.
Yesterday, a suicide bomber blew up an ambulance at an Iraqi police station near Ramadi, killing 14 people including women and children.
Increasing conflict
The attacks signalled an increasing conflict in Anbar between al Qaeda and Sunni tribal leaders, officials have said.
Such attacks also underscore the violence gripping Iraq, as US and Iraqi forces step up a new security crackdown in Baghdad. Washington is also sending extra troops to Anbar.
As part of efforts to stabilise Iraq, officials from regional states including Iran and Syria would join US and British envoys at a meeting in Baghdad next month, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Tuesday.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Iraq planned to convene a high-level meeting of its neighbours and the Group of Eight leading industrialised countries as early as in April.
That meeting, to be held at ministerial level, would follow lower-level discussions in Baghdad in March, Rice said in excerpts of congressional testimony that were released by the State Department.
The US embassy in Baghdad said Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad would attend the planned mid-March talks. A British embassy spokeswoman said Britain would also take part but it was unclear at what level.
The March meeting would be a chance for Western and regional powers to try to bridge some of their differences over Iraq, Zebari said.
"Our hope is that this will be an ice-breaking attempt for maybe holding other meetings in the future. We want Iraq, instead of being a divisive issue, to be a unifying issue," said Zebari.
In December, a report by the bipartisan US Iraq Study Group recommended Washington hold direct talks with Damascus and Tehran to persuade them to help stem violence in Iraq. President Bush reacted coolly.
Washington accuses Iran of fanning violence in Iraq and has recently presented what the US military says is evidence Iranian-manufactured weapons are being smuggled into Iraq.
US officials accuse Syria of allowing foreign fighters to cross its long, porous border with Iraq to join those fighting the U.S.-backed government.
Both countries deny the accusations.
- REUTERS
