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BAGHDAD - 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.
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. A Web statement claimed responsibility in the name of al-Qaida in Iraq. Its authenticity could not be confirmed.
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 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.
On Feb. 28, a suicide car bomber struck a crowd of police and army recruits in Hillah, 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.
In other violence Saturday, 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 Saturday in Mahmoudiya, 12 miles south of Baghdad.
Also Saturday, a police officer and a female relative traveling with him in a civilian car were killed in a driveby shooting in Kirkuk, about 180 miles north of Baghdad, authorities 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.
"We take these allegations seriously and will thoroughly investigate this incident to determine what happened," Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Johnson said in a statement, adding that the investigation could take several weeks.