SUICIDE BOMBERS KILL AT LEAST 27 IN IRAQ

Suicide bomb attacks outside a hospital and a police station killed 27 Iraqis early this morning. In Mosul, a suicide bomber outside Jumhuriya Hospital summoned a group of policemen to him and detonated the bomb killing 12 and wounding four, officials and witnesses said. "I heard an explosion. When I went to check, I saw bodies everywhere," Tahseen Ali Mahmoud al-Obeidi, hospital director, said. It has been noted that hospitals have become targets, and it is not unusual for insurgents to enter hospitals and try to snatch security receiving treatment. In Baquba, about a half hour later at 3 1. m., a car bomb in a taxi outside a police station killed 15 people, police said. Col Dana Pittard, commander of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, said the dead were civilians looking for work, eighter as police officers or in civilian posts abailable at the station. The car bomb was within 50 feet of the police complex and was in a security cordon at the time of the blast. The Baquba police station is a joint command and control center, the nerve hub of opertion in the area. Also, insurgents attacked a convoy of three trucks hauling 18 Kias destined for Iraq`s Ministry of the Interior, destroying the vehicles and kidnapping the drivers, Iraqi police said. The incident happened in al-Souaira about 37 miles southeast of Baghdad, around 9 a. m. Sunday morning. Also, a roadside bomb north of the Iraqi capital killed a U. S. soldier and wounded two others Sunday afternoon, the U.S. military said. American commanders announced that a U.S. Marine died Saturday in Babil province, south of Baghdad, but didn`t provide any details. The deaths announced Sunday raise the toal number of American troops killed since the U.S. led invasion of Iraq to 1,448. More than 1,000 of those have died battling the insurgency that arose after Saddam Hussein was overthrown in April 2003.