Three suicide bomb attacks in the northern city of Mosul killed more than 24 people today, many of them from the Iraqi security forces.
Within hours a suicide car bomber wrecked a police headquarters, an attack on an Iraqi army base killed up to 16 people and four police were killed when a bomber walked into Mosul's General Hospital and blew himself up.
The third attack, on a police post inside the hospital, damaged the emergency ward where casualties had been brought from the previous incidents.
Six policemen and nine civilians were wounded, police said at the scene. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the assault on the hospital but the earlier two bombings were claimed by al-Qaeda's Iraq wing, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The car bomber drove at a district police headquarters at Bab al-Toob in the city centre, striking a rear wall to bring down a section of the old, two-storey building and devastate surrounding market stalls as people started the working day.
Five police and a civilian were killed and 14 people were wounded, hospital staff said. A US military spokesman, Captain Mark Walter, said he had a report of 13 police and two civilians killed but these figures were being checked again.
He said up to 16 people were killed and seven wounded, mostly labourers, by another suicide bomber at an army post at Kasak, between Mosul and the violent city of Tal Afar, to the west.
Locals reported heavy fighting at Tal Afar yesterday. Medical staff in Mosul said they had received five dead and 13 wounded from the Kasak base, many of them building workers, shortly before the bomb attack on the hospital itself.
Iraqi military officials said two suicide bombers appeared to have attacked the base, in line with the claim by al-Qaeda.
US troops have been fighting in Tal Afar for weeks. They say foreign fighters come into the city from nearby Syria. Iraqi police and troops have become prime targets for the rebels.