Suicide bombers struck 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 a separate incident on Saturday, a fire destroyed a United States military helicopter while it was conducting routine resupply operations near Camp Ramadi in western Iraq, slightly injuring one crewman.
The CH-47 Chinook caught fire on the ground and the cause of the blaze was under investigation, the military said in a statement on Sunday.
In the first suicide attack, an attacker blew himself up outside a recruiting station for police special forces in western Baghdad early on Saturday, killing at least 16 other people, including 11 recruits, police and hospital officials said. Another 22 people were injured. A statement posted on the internet claimed responsibility in the name of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The other attacks occurred in Hillah, a mostly Shiite city 95km 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 centre.
Six policemen 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 95km south of Baghdad. On February 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. 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 on Saturday, three Iraqi soldiers were killed on 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, 20km 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 on 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 on Saturday, a policeman and a female relative travelling with him in a civilian car were killed in a drive-by shooting in Kirkuk, 290km north of Baghdad, authorities said.
A parked car bomb exploded on 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 Shi’ite-led government on April 28.
Also on Saturday, the US military promised a full investigation into a June 25 incident in which Iraq’s United Nations 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,” Major General Stephen 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 SJ, was accidentally shot by a US 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. – Sapa-AP