BAGHDAD — Authorities sealed off the city of Fallujah Thursday after two suicide bombings killed 15 people and wounded more than 100, Iraqi police said.
No one was allowed in or out of the city for five hours and a day-long curfew kept people off the street inside the city after the 11 a.m. bombings.
Both attacks targeted police stations, one in the northern part of the city and the other in its center.
Attacks such as these have become rare in Fallujah, a city west of Baghdad that has been the subject of intense security operations since 2004, when U.S. Marines seized the city after it became the center of the anti-U.S. Sunni Muslim insurgency. Fallujah residents now carry identification cards issued by the U.S., and their cars are searched rigorously whenever they enter the city.
A spokesman for the Multi-National Forces-Iraq confirmed that two explosions took place, but the military was not prepared to comment further.
The attacks happened within seconds of each other.
At the Hdheri police station in central Fallujah, officers saw the attacker approaching them in a truck. They reportedly ordered him to stop, and shot him when he continued driving.
The truck exploded, damaging houses and injuring many.
The other incident took place at the al Jolan police station in northern Fallujah.
(Hammoudi and Dulaimy are McClatchy special correspondents.)
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