Violence kills more than 40 in Iraq as government prepares new security measures

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Bombers and gunmen killed more than 40 people and injured dozens across Iraq on Monday as the government prepared to further tighten security ahead of the holy month of Ramadan, when violence traditionally spikes in the country.

Meanwhile, tribes in one of Iraq's most volatile provinces have joined together to fight the insurgency in their region, calling on the government and the U.S.-led military coalition to give them weapons, a prominent tribal leader said.

Tribal leaders and clerics in Ramadi, the capital of violent Anbar province, met last week and have set up a force of about 20,000 men "ready to purge the city of these infidels," Sheik Fassal al-Guood, a prominent tribal leader from Ramadi, told The Associated Press.

"People are fed up with the acts of those criminals who take Islam as a cover for their crimes," he said. "The situation in the province is unbearable, the city is abandoned, most of the families have fled the city and all services are poor."

Two suicide car bombers attacked a police station in Ramadi on Monday, killing at least two police officers and injuring 26 people, the Interior Ministry said. U.S.-led coalition forces said they were looking into the report.

Elsewhere, a suicide bomber killed at least 20 people and wounded 17 others in an open-air market in the northwestern city of Tal Afar, police chief Brig. Sabah Hamidi said. There were no Iraqi or U.S.-led security forces in the area at the time, he said.

Three Iraqi army soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb that targeted their patrol in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of the capital. A gunman on a motorcycle killed a woman and a group attacked a family in their home, killing two brothers.

Gunmen also attacked a Shiite family in Baqouba as they prepared to leave for Baghdad, killing four people, including a young girl.

In Muqdadiyah to the northeast, an armed group killed two civilians.

In other violence, four policemen were killed when their patrol was ambushed by unidentified gunmen in the northern city of Mosul, 230 miles northwest of Baghdad, police Maj. Ahmed Khalid said. Police also found the bodies of two women shot in the head and chest.

Two civilians were killed and seven others injured when a mortar round slammed into a street in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, police 1st Lt. Thair Mohamod said.