Suicide bombers target police in Baghdad and Hillah

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Suicide bombers struck Saturday in Baghdad and a Shiite 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 Baghdad, killing at least 16 other people, including 11 recruits. Another 22 people were injured. A Web statement claimed responsibility in the name of al-Qaida in Iraq.

The other attacks occurred in Hillah, a mostly Shiite city 60 miles south of Baghdad. Police Capt. 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 policemen and the attacker died in the blast, Ali said.

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 Shiite city about 60 miles south of Baghdad. On Feb. 28, a suicide car bomber struck a crowd of police and army recruits in Hillah, killing 125 and wounding more than 140.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Hillah attacks. However, a posting on an Islamic Web site claimed responsibility for the Baghdad blast in the name of al-Qaida in Iraq.

The statement's authenticity could not be confirmed.

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

In other violence Saturday, three Iraqi soldiers were killed Saturday 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 Saturday in Mahmoudiya, 12 miles south of Baghdad.

The blast occurred a few minutes after mourners passed by with the body of an aide to Shiite 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 Shiite shrine city of Najaf.

Also Saturday, a policeman 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 Saturday 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 Shiite-led government on April 28.

Also Saturday, the U.S. military promised a full investigation into a June 25 incident in which Iraq's U.N. 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.

"The events described in the allegations roughly correspond to an incident involving Coalition Forces on that day in that general location; therefore a military inquiry has been initiated," Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Johnson said in a statement.

"We take these allegations seriously and will thoroughly investigate this incident to determine what happened," Johnson said, adding that the investigation could take several weeks.

Swiss authorities, meanwhile, said a dual Swiss-Iraqi national was shot and killed in Iraq. Swiss media reports said the victim, identified only as S.J., was accidentally shot by a U.S. soldier but the Swiss Foreign Ministry would not confirm details of his death.

Insurgent attacks have raised tensions among Iraq's varied ethnic and religious groups and have raised fears of civil war. In a statement Saturday, the leader of Iraq's biggest Shiite political party warned against sectarian strife and called on the Iraqi government to step up efforts to fight with militants.

"We stress the importance of being alert and cautious not to be carried away toward the sectarian strife that our enemies want for us," Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said. "We ask the Iraqi government, particularly the security apparatuses, to exert more efforts to strike these terrorist groups."

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Associated Press correspondents Sinan Salaheddin, Mariam Fam and Omar Sinan contributed to this report.