A suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives killed 16 people and wounded 50 others today at a military base in Iraq's western Anbar province.
The attacker went up to a group of soldiers headed for a canteen in the base in Habbaniyah, about 70 kilometres from Baghdad, and then detonated his explosives.
Anbar had once been overrun with al-Qaeda and other Sunni Islamist insurgents, but turned into one of Iraq's quietest provinces after Sunni tribal sheikhs turned on militants in their midst in late 2006.
The attack is the latest in a string of bombings in Iraq in recent weeks.
The blast followed an attack on a bus carrying police assigned to guard northern Iraq's oil industry in the city of Kirkuk on Wednesday. Ten people were killed in the explosion, which could have been caused by a parked car bomb or a car driven by suicide bomber, police said