Suicide bombers kill 26 in Iraq

BAGHDAD -- Suicide bombers struck yesterday in Baghdad and a Shi'ite city south of the capital in attacks that killed 26 people and injured nearly 50, Iraqi officials said. One of the attackers targeted bystanders and police who had rushed to the scene of an earlier blast.

In the first attack, an attacker blew himself up outside a recruiting station for police special forces in western Baghdad, killing at least 16 other people, including 11 recruits, police and hospital officials said. Another 22 people were injured. An Internet statement claimed responsibility in the name of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

The other attacks occurred in Hillah, a mostly Shi'ite city 60 miles south of Baghdad. Police Captain Muthana Khalid Ali said the first blast occurred when a suicide bomber detonated a belt of explosives at a police checkpoint in the city center.

Six police officers and the attacker died in the blast, Ali said.

About 10 minutes later, a second suicide attacker blew himself up in a crowd of police and civilians who had rushed to the scene of the first blast, Ali said. Twenty-six people were injured, but only the attacker died, according to Dr. Hashim Suleiman of the Hillah General Hospital.

Hillah is a largely Shi'ite city about 60 miles south of Baghdad. On Feb. 28, a suicide car bomber struck a crowd of police and army recruits in the city, killing 125 and wounding more than 140 in the second deadliest attack since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Hillah attacks. However, a posting on an Islamic website claimed responsibility for the Baghdad blast in the name of Al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The statement's authenticity could not be confirmed. Al-Zarqawi's group is believed responsible for numerous suicide bombings and beheadings of foreign hostages in Iraq.

In other violence yesterday, three Iraqi soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing northeast of Baghdad, their commander said. Gunmen also assassinated a police lieutenant colonel in the northern city of Mosul, officials said.

Two other people were killed when a bomb hidden in a vegetable cart exploded in Mahmoudiya, 12 miles south of Baghdad.

The blast occurred a few minutes after mourners passed by with the body of an aide to Shi'ite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani who was slain Friday outside a Baghdad mosque. The mourners were carrying the body through the town en route to burial in the Shi'ite shrine city of Najaf.

Also yesterday, a police officer and a female relative traveling with him in a civilian car were killed in a drive-by shooting in Kirkuk, 290 kilometers north of Baghdad, authorities said.

A parked car bomb exploded yesterday near a police station in the New Baghdad section of the capital, wounding nine people including two policemen, officials said.

More than 1,400 people have been killed in Iraq since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his Shi'ite-led government on April 28.

Also yesterday, the US military promised a full investigation into a June 25 incident in which Iraq's UN ambassador, Samir Sumaidaie, said Marines killed his unarmed 21-year-old cousin in ''cold blood" in Anbar province.

Sumaidaie said his cousin, Mohammed Sumaidaie, took Marines doing house-to-house searches to a bedroom to show them where a rifle that had no live ammunition was kept. When the Marines left, he was found in the bedroom with a bullet in his neck, Sumaidaie said.

He called the killing ''a betrayal" of the values and aspirations of Iraqis and Americans to defeat the terrorists and build a country based on freedom, democracy, and respect for human rights and the rule of law.