RAMADI, Iraq
Eleven Iraqi soldiers were killed and 23 others injured during violent confrontations between Iraqi army and armed tribesmen in the restive western province of Anbar, a tribal source said Wednesday.
"Violent clashes broke out in the early hours of Wednesday between tribesmen and the army in a number of districts in southern and western Ramadi where tribesmen attacked Iraqi military vehicles," the source, who preferred anonymity, told Anadolu Agency.
According to the source, clashes took place in six different neighborhoods in Ramadi, the province's capital. Tribesmen were able to destroy as many as five military vehicles during the gunfights.
A military commander, according to the source, had been critically injured during the confrontations.
Iraqi military officials were not available for comment.
"The tribal revolutionaries are now on highest alert in preparation to resist any attacks by the army and pro-government militias on the city," the source told Anadolu Agency, adding that the violence-ridden city suffers severe lack of food supplies.
Fallujah and Ramadi, the two main cities of Iraq's western Anbar province, have been ravaged by violence since December, when Iraqi security forces dismantled a months-long anti-government sit-in outside Ramadi.
The sit-in was meant to protest perceived anti-Sunni discrimination by the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
The Iraqi government says its military operations in the province target the Al-Qaeda-allied Islamic State in Iraq and Levant.
But local Sunni tribes, which deny any links to the militant group, voice anger over continued civilian causalities and have vowed to resist government troops deployed to the area.
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