IRAQ - Jun 25-26 - Insurgents Kill At Least 37 In Bombings.

Four suicide bomb attacks strike the Iraqi police and an Iraqi Army base in a 16-hour wave of insurgent violence that sweep the northern city of Mosul, leaving at least 37 people dead and scores more wounded. One US commander said the violence was the latest sign that insurgents in northern Iraq were increasingly focusing coordinated attacks on the growing ranks of Iraqi security forces. Mosul, the hub of the north, saw a total security meltdown in November, when almost all of the police officers and most Iraqi troops stationed around the city abandoned their posts and in some cases helped ransack their own bases. The crisis forced the military to pull troops out of the fight in Falluja to reinforce US soldiers to Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city. After November, insurgents increased attacks on US troops, but the violence receded after the Jan 30 election - only to pick up at a ferocious pace in late March and April.

Over a six-week period the unit that oversees most of western Mosul, the 1st Battalion of the 24th Infantry Regiment, was hit with 27 suicide car bombs, said Maj Mike Lawrence, the battalion's executive officer. In the months that followed the November collapse, US military units boosted efforts to train and equip the Iraqi police and troops here, and US commanders hope Iraqi forces will be able to provide much of the security for the constitutional referendum scheduled for October and the subsequent national elections in December. Those hopes have been bolstered by the capture in recent days of top terrorist leaders in Mosul, including Mohammad Shakara, also known as Abu Talha, the head of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi's network in northern Iraq. But the attacks on Jun 24 - for which Zarqawi's network claimed credit in an Internet posting - demonstrated how susceptible the Iraqi forces remain to suicide strikes, a vulnerability the insurgents now appear to be trying to exploit once again. So far this time, Lawrence said in an interview, Iraqi forces aren't running away from attacks.

In November, he said, they bolted their posts after what in most cases was only the threat of violence from insurgents. Now, despite being hit hard in bomb attacks in recent weeks, the Iraqis are not wavering, he said. In one of the attacks this Jun 25, an early Jun 26 morning strike against a police station in central Mosul that killed 10 policemen, Iraqi forces responded within minutes accompanied by only a handful of US military advisers, he said. Among other Jun 25 attacks was one on the east side of the Tigris River Jun 23 night, when a suicide car bomb exploded at an Iraqi police checkpoint at about 8 p.m. Then, in the morning, came the 6 a.m. strike on the Bab Al Tob police station in west-central Mosul. A truck laden with what the military initially estimated to be 455 kgs, or 1,000 pounds, of explosives, hidden underneath a layer of fruit and melons, drove up and parked next to the police station. The driver appeared to fiddle around in his cab for a few minutes before the bomb exploded, ripping apart the station and killing 10 policemen who were in what was either a sleeping area or a recreation area within the station immediately on the other side of the wall from the truck.