27 dead in Iraq suicide attacks

Suicide bombers targeted Iraqi security forces in two cities today, killing at least 27 people and injuring more than 20 others.

The attacks were aimed at undermining morale in a force the US hopes will assume a greater role in battling the rebels.

In the northern city of Mosul, a suicide bomber blew himself up among a group of policemen inside a hospital compound, killing 12 policemen and injuring four others, hospital officials said.

An al-Qaida-linked group claimed responsibility.

In another attack, a police station in the city was hit by more than a dozen mortar rounds that killed three civilians.

A car bomb exploded outside the protective blast barriers of a provincial police headquarters in the city of Baqouba, killing 15 people and wounding 17, police Colonel Mudhahar al-Jubouri said. Many of the victims were there to seek jobs as policemen, he said.

The Mosul attack occurred at the city’s Jumhouri Teaching Hospital, hospital director Tahseen Ali Mahmoud al-Obeidi said. Witnesses said the bomber called the police officers over to him and then blew up among the crowd.

“I heard an explosion. When I went to check, I saw bodies everywhere,” al-Obeidi said.

In a website claim, the al-Qaida in Iraq group, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said “a lion from the Martyrs Brigade” wearing an explosives belt managed to get inside a police post at the Mosul hospital. The claim could not be verified.

There was no claim for the Baqouba attack.

Mosul, Iraq’s third city, has seen daily insurgent attacks and rebel clashes with US troops and Iraqi security forces. Violence has surged since a rebel uprising in November drove out nearly all of the city’s police force.