By Suleiman al-Qubeisi

ANBAR, Iraq

Three soldiers were killed and another eight injured on Thursday in two separate attacks in Iraq’s western Anbar province, according to a military source.

"A suicide attacker drove his bomb-laden vehicle into an army checkpoint on the Fallujah-Amiriyat al-Semoud road south of Fallujah," Army Colonel Walid al-Deleimi told Anadolu Agency.

The explosion, al-Deleimi said, had resulted in the death of two soldiers and the injury of two others.

In a separate incident the same day, the officer reported, another soldier was killed and six others injured when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb on the Baiji-Haditha road some 160 kilometers west of Ramadi, Anbar’s regional capital.

While no group has claimed responsibility for Thursday’s deadly blasts, local authorities typically blame the Daesh terrorist group -- which overran much of Iraq in mid-2014 -- for such attacks.

The Iraqi army is currently engaged in a wide-ranging offensive aimed at dislodging Daesh terrorists from the northern city of Mosul.