Seven people, including two traffic policemen, have been killed in a suicide car bombing in Iraq's western Anbar province.

Police said the attack in the Iraqi city of Ramadi on Wednesday, the first in several months, targeted security forces at a police checkpoint.

Abid Khalaf Dulaini, a police officer, said: "The explosion happened when a suicide bomber targeted a police checkpoint near al-Dawlah al-Khabir mosque, [in] central Ramadi."

Sixteen other people were wounded in the blast, including a number of children and four other traffic policemen, Salah Alani, a doctor at Ramadi general hospital, said.

Anbar province, where there was strong resistance to the US-led invasion, has been relatively quiet in recent months, partly because Sunni tribal leaders joined up with US-led forces to fight al-Qaeda.

The Ramadi bombing came just a few hours before a funeral march was held in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, to mourn two traffic policemen who were killed in a battle with armed men a day earlier.

In the capital, dozens of mourners, including senior officials from the interior ministry, attended the funeral.

Fellow traffic police motorcyclists led the procession, which included the slain officers' wooden caskets wrapped in Iraqi flags.