Three Car Bombs Leave At Least 22 Dead in Ramadi, Iraq

Three car bombs exploded within an hour in Ramadi, Iraq on Sunday leaving at least 22 dead. The deadly attack is just the latest in an increase of violence in the region.

The first explosion was at the provincial police headquarters. A car rammed a concrete wall at the station. The second explosion followed at the scene when a motorcycle bomb was detonated. The blast hit police and bystanders who had rushed to the area to help those injured in the first blast. Most of the dead came from this explosion. The third explosion took place outside of the main hospital in Ramadi, Ramadi General Hospital. A car bomb exploded at the site where those injured from the first two explosions would be going. The hospital was protected by fortified walls. Those walls were scheduled to be removed by the provincial council in September but an increase of violence had changed that order. The trio of explosions are a hallmark of al-Qaeda. They were designed to target those who come to the aid of a first explosion and security forces. Most of those that lay dead in the street were civilians. More than 80 were wounded in the trio of bombings. The Miami Herald reports:

"Who is responsible for this massacre? Where are the security forces? Where is the work of the police?" shouted Abdel Moneim Ahmed, 42, a teacher whose face and torso were injured by flying glass. "What did elections do for us? That is what people ask. We will not participate in their upcoming elections. It will be another failure."

On Sunday area police announced a curfew for Ramadi and Fallujah. The local security forces are also attempting to crack down on journalists there covering the blasts. The Journalistic Freedoms Observatory has reported that journalists have been beaten and their video footage of the scene destroyed. The New York Times reports:

Hekmet Jassim Zeidan, the deputy governor of Anbar, said the province’s police officials had been negligent.

“The police commanders are not doing their job the way it should be done,” he said. “We have pointed out the mistakes and failures among the police, but no one has done anything to correct the problems.”