9 killed, 22 wounded in shelling on Iraq\'s Fallujah, Ramadi

Nine people were killed and 22 others wounded in shelling on the cities of Ramadi, the capital of Iraq's western Anbar province, and nearby Fallujah, medical source and police said on Saturday. The deadliest casualties occurred in the city of Fallujah when the artillery pounded on several neighborhoods late on Friday night and Saturday morning. The main hospital of the city received eight bodies and 16 wounded, including women and children, a source from the city hospital told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Meanwhile, a civilian was killed and six others were wounded in artillery and mortar shelling on several neighborhoods in southern and northern of Ramadi, some 110 km west of Baghdad, a provincial police source anonymously told Xinhua. The shelling also destroyed and damaged several houses in the city, the source said. The ongoing violence in the Anbar came as the United Nations refugee agency on Friday said that more than 65,000 people had fled the conflict in the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi in Anbar over the past week. Anbar province has been the scene of fierce clashes that flared up after Iraqi police dismantled an anti-government protest site outside Ramadi in late December last year. The Sunnis have been carrying out a year-long protest, accusing the Shiite-led government of marginalizing them and its Shiite- dominated security forces of indiscriminately arresting, torturing and killing their sons.