Truck Bomb Kills 37 In Western Iraq

The bomb exploded in the town of Habaniya, 85 km (50 miles) west of Baghdad.

A truck bomb killed 37 people and wounded 64 near a Sunni mosque in a market in volatile western Iraq on Saturday, police said.

The bomb exploded in the town of Habaniya, 85 km (50 miles) west of Baghdad in Anbar province, where U.S. forces are battling a fierce Sunni Arab insurgency.

A source at the Interior Ministry put the death toll at 31, with 67 wounded.

Insurgents earlier stormed an Iraqi police checkpoint near Baghdad airport, killing eight policemen in a bold challenge to a U.S.-backed security crackdown in the capital aimed at halting raging sectarian violence.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki expressed optimism about the 10-day old security plan, saying U.S. and Iraqi forces had killed around 400 suspected militants since it started.

But the attack on the police checkpoint in an area not far from the main U.S. military headquarters in Baghdad underlined the hurdles faced by Iraqi security forces who are often out-gunned by increasingly sophisticated insurgents.

"It was a brazen attack," said Captain Curtis Kellogg, a U.S. militar