The attack comes amid a surge in violence which in past weeks has swept the province of Anbar and its capital Ramadi, shattering a long period of relative calm in what was once the epicentre of Al-Qaeda activity and Sunni insurgency.

"At least four people were killed and 23 others wounded, including women and children, by a female suicide bomber at the entrance to the provincial government building," an interior ministry official said.

Local officials could not immediately confirm the toll.

Mohammed Fathi, a spokesman for the Anbar provincial authorities, quoting initial hospital reports, told AFP earlier that at least 10 people were hurt in the attack west of Baghdad.

Elsewhere, a suicide bomber killed two policemen when he detonated an explosives belt as he was fired upon by officers near a central police station in the main northern city of Mosul, police Colonel Taha Salaheddin said.

And in the northern oil hub of Kirkuk, a suicide bomber in a car set off his payload outside the government building, wounding nine people including an official responsible for religious properties, police Colonel Khalil Ibrahim said.

While violence has generally decreased over most of Iraq, the provinces of Kirkuk and Nineveh, of which Mosul is the capital, remains the scene of bloody attacks, partly because of sectarian tensions.

Anbar, the scene of Sunday's worst attack, became the theatre of a brutal war focussed on Fallujah and Ramadi in the first years after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

Anbar calmed dramatically after Sunni Arabs there turned against Al-Qaeda in 2006 and began what was to grow into a nationwide anti-Qaeda Sahwa, or "Awakening," militia.

But the past weeks have seen a resurgence of violence, with troops on Tuesday killing a suicide bomber east of Ramadi, foiling a multiple attack on Muslim worshippers gathering before dawn for prayers.

That same day a roadside bomb killed the vice chancellor of Ramadi's Islamic University, Ahmed Jumaa, and wounded two other people in the nearby Euphrates Valley town of Hit.

And on Wednesday two gunmen attacked Major Salam Khalifa, a police commander from Ramadi, as he was walking with his wife and friend in the centre of Hit.

Seven Iraqi soldiers were killed on June 18 in an ambush in Akashat near the Syrian border.

US and Iraqi officials had warned of the dangers of an upsurge of violence if negotiations on forming a new governing coalition some four months after an inconclusive general election drag on too long, giving insurgent groups an opportunity to further destabilise the country.

Government statistics released Wednesday however indicated an opposite trend, showing that 284 people were killed in political violence across Iraq in June, compared with 337 civilians, police and soldiers who died in violence in May.

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