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 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.

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.

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.

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, 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 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.

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.