A suspected suicide bomber has killed at least 11 people in an attack on a tribal council building in Iraq's al-Anbar province.

The leader of the council in the town of Garma, about 30km west of the capital Baghdad, was among the dead, police said on Thursday.

At least 17 other people were reportedly wounded in the explosion in the town about 30km from the capital, Colonel Dawood al-Marawi, police spokesman in nearby Falluja, told the Reuters news agency.

Kamal al-Ayash, spokesman for the Fallujah town council, said that the bomber blew himself up as the council leader was meeting senior members of a so-called "Awakening" group.
 
"At least 11 senior members of the Awakening group have been killed," he told the AFP news agency.

The "Awakening" groups of Sunni tribes have been largely credited with subduing the violence in al-Anbar by forming local armed groups to fight those loyal to al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Police told the Associated Press that the bomber entered the building through a back door, but it was unclear how he managed to evade security.

Colonel Fawzi Fraih, civil defence director of al-Anbar province, told the Associated Press that the group was meeting Americans when the attack occured.

However, the US military did not immediately confirm whether Americans were inside the building at the time.

The attack came just days before Iraqi forces were due to take control of security in the province from the US military.

Al-Anbar, the largest province in Iraq, would be the tenth of Iraq's 18 provinces to be handed back to Iraqi forces.

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