Mosul, June 26 (Reuters): Three suicide bomb attacks in the northern city of Mosul killed more than two dozen people today, many of them from the Iraqi security forces, as insurgents kept up pressure on the US-backed government.

Within hours a suicide car bomber wrecked a police headquarters, an attack on an Iraqi army base killed up to 16 people and four policemen 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 told a Reuters reporter 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 Qaida’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.