IRAQ: Iraq's government and police said a bomb blast near a soccer pitch in the city of Ramadi killed 18 people, mostly children yesterday, but the US military said it was unaware of such an attack.
The US said its soldiers had carried out a controlled explosion in the volatile western city, also near a soccer pitch, that wounded 30 people, including nine children.
"I can't imagine there would be another attack involving children without our people knowing," said Maj Jeff Pool, a spokesman for US forces in western Anbar province. The wounded had cuts and bruises, he said.
The offices of prime minister Nuri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani both issued statements condemning the blast they said killed 18 people. Mr Maliki's office said the dead included 12 children, while Mr Talabani's spokesman office said all 18 were children.
Maj 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.
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 5pm. The controlled US blast was at 5:34pm, Maj Pool said.
Tribal leader Hamid Farhan al-Hays from Ramadi, speaking on Iraqiya state television, blamed the blast on Sunni al-Qaeda.
Sunni tribal elders are involved in an escalating power struggle with al-Qaeda 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.
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.
On Monday, a suicide bomber blew up an ambulance at an Iraqi police station near Ramadi, killing 14 people.
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 yesterday.
The US embassy in Baghdad said the 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, Mr Zebari said by telephone from Denmark where he was on a visit.
"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," he said.
In December a report by the bipartisan US Iraq Study Group recommended that Washington hold direct talks with Damascus and Tehran to persuade them to help stem violence in Iraq.
US officials accuse Iran of fanning violence in Iraq. They say Syria allows foreign fighters to cross its long, porous border to join those fighting the US-backed government. Both countries deny the accusations.