Insurgents target Iraqi security forces in Baghdad attacks, killing at least 20 people

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Insurgents killed at least 20 people in three separate attacks targeting Iraqi security forces in Baghdad on Thursday, including one by a man who blew himself up while waiting in line outside an army recruitment center, police said.

A similar attack Wednesday by a suicide bomber standing in line outside a police recruitment center in the northern Kurdish city of Irbil killed 60 Iraqis and wounded 150.

The attacks are part of an escalation of violence aimed at destabilizing Iraq's new democratic government, which held its first Cabinet meeting Thursday. The insurgents often target Iraqi security forces, which are being recruited and trained by the U.S.-led coalition as part of its eventual exit strategy.

Elsewhere, a car bomb exploded near a police patrol in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, killing four policemen and wounding five, said police Brig. Wathiq Mohammed Taher.

U.S. forces searched a hospital in central Iraq last week for suspected terrorists after receiving a tip, but none was found, the military said Thursday. It would not say if troops were looking for militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi at the hospital in Ramadi. A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said U.S. officials had been alerted to "possible terrorist activities related to" al-Zarqawi "in and around" the hospital.

Another U.S. official, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, said it would be inappropriate to say publicly whether U.S. officials believe al-Zarqawi is ill or injured because that information could complicate efforts to capture him.

Al-Zarqawi, leader of the country's most feared terrorist group, al-Qaida in Iraq, is the most-wanted man in Iraq, and he is tied to many bombings and kidnappings since Saddam Hussein was driven from power in 2003.

The latest violence has left the government grappling with how to deal with an insurgency seemingly bent on escalating attacks.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari had hoped to draw support away from the insurgency by including in his Cabinet members of the disaffected Sunni Arab minority, which dominated under Saddam. But members of his Shiite-dominated alliance have blocked candidates with links to Saddam's regime, which brutally repressed Shiites and Kurds.