Al Baghdadi - Nine people, including soldiers and civilians, died in Anbar province in Iraq on Friday after a suicide bomber blew himself up.
He was one of a group of four suicide bombers who infiltrated a neighbourhood of Al Baghdadi, a town on the Euphrates River in the restive western province of Anbar, AFP reported.
"Army forces were able to kill three suicide bombers after trapping them in a house in the Martyrs neighbourhood by detonating their belts with gunfire," a senior police officer said.
"The fourth managed to hide and later blow himself up in the midst of a group of civilians and soldiers," the officer said.
A local policce officer and a district official said in addition to the nine killed, another 11 people were injured.
Anbar province, which is mostly desert, is transvered by the Euphrates River and borders Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
It was a stronghold of the Islamic State (IS) which managed to secure control of two-thirds of Iraq in 2014. However, pro-government forces have since retaken most towns and cities in Anbar, but the Islamist militants still control areas near the Syrian border and have desert hideouts from which they harass federal forces.
Iraqi military forces are currently engaged in ousting the IS from their last areas of control in west Mosul, after successfully driving them out of east Mosul in January.