Up to eight people were killed and 19 others injured Thursday evening in three bomb attacks, including a suicide bombing, in central Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, police source told Xinhua.

The attack took place at about local time 7:15 p.m. (1615 GMT), when a sticky bomb attached to a civilian car parked on a main road in central Ramadi detonated, the source from the provincial operations command said on condition of anonymity.

Minutes later, a suicide bomber blew up his explosive vest among a crowd of policemen and civilians who were attracted to gather to look at the site of the first blast, killing six and wounding 15 others, the source said.

Among the victims of the second blast, three policemen were killed and three others wounded, the source said.

Later, another roadside bomb went off near police vehicles outside the hospital of Ramadi where the victims of the earlier blasts were being evacuated by the police vehicles, destroying a police vehicle and killing two policemen aboard and wounding four others, the source added.

Insurgent attacks continue in the once volatile Sunni Arab area in west Baghdad that stretches through Anbar province to Iraq's western borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The vast desert area has been relatively calm for more than three years after Sunni tribes and anti-U.S. insurgent groups turned to cooperate with the U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces against al-Qaida network in Iraq.