Bomb in Iraq's Falluja kills five and wounds 21

FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - A car bomb in the western Iraqi city of Falluja killed five people and wounded 21 others on Saturday, an Interior Ministry source said.

The source, who declined to be named, said the vehicle had exploded near the offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party, an influential Sunni Arab political group, in the city in Anbar province.

Local police said earlier there were two blasts, and put the toll at two people killed and 25 wounded.

They said the first blast had been a truck bomb, and that a second bomb went off in a car parked on a road leading from the party offices to a local hospital.

Roads leading into the city were closed after the attack and a vehicle ban was imposed.

Anbar had been relatively quiet since Sunni Muslim tribal leaders in 2006 turned on Sunni Islamist groups like al Qaeda, who had once dominated the vast desert province. But violence appears to have escalated in the region in recent weeks.

On Tuesday, Iraqi officials declared a rare vehicle ban across Anbar after two bomb attacks killed three people in the provincial capital Ramadi. A day earlier, an explosion killed two policemen in the city.

The Iraqi Islamic Party is the main political party in parliament representing Iraq's once dominant Sunni minority.