The relative calm enjoyed by Iraq since elections on January 30 was shattered by two suicide bombings and a mortar attack today that have left at least 30 people dead and more than 20 injured.

A car bomb exploded outside the main gate of a provincial police station in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, killing 15 Iraqis and wounding 17. Many of the victims had been seeking jobs as policemen, said Mudhahar al-Jubouri, a colonel in the Iraqi police.

In a separate attack, at least 12 people were killed at 16 injured by a suicide bomber who walked into a group of policemen inside a hospital compound in the northern town of Mosul.

Witnesses said the suicide bomber called the police officers over to him and then blew up among the crowd. Hospital director Tahseen Ali Mahmoud al-Obeidi said: "I heard an explosion. When I went to check, I saw bodies everywhere."

The hospital attack was later claimed by the terror group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is linked to al-Qaeda. "The martyr was wearing an explosives belt and blew himself up after he entered the crowd," a statement on an Islamist website said.

Mosul has seen daily attacks and rebel clashes with US troops and Iraqi security forces since a guerrilla uprising in November, which drove out nearly all of the city's police force. Three more people died in a mortar attack at a Mosul police station today.

Meanwhile confusion surrounded a report that 22 Iraqi security troops and 14 insurgents were killed late last night when rebels tried to storm a police station in a village south of Baghdad.

The news came from an Iraqi police captain, but the US military command has denied it, saying that provincial authorities had reported no fighting in the Mahawil district, about 50 miles (80 kilometres) south of Baghdad. The Polish military, which is responsible for the area, reported hours earlier that two Iraqi national guardsmen were killed and three were wounded in an ambush in the same community.

Muthana Khalid Ali, the police captain, said that the dead included five Iraqi national guardsmen and 17 policemen.

Today is the original deadline set by an Islamist militant group that claimed to have kidnapped Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena on Friday while she was interviewing people near Baghdad University.

However, the deadline was not mentioned in a new statement today from the Jihad Organisation, which it was the same group as the Islamic Jihad Organisation that said it had taken Ms Sgrena and set a 72-hour deadline for Italy to remove its troops from Iraq.

"This is the last letter to the Italian government and the Italian Prime Minister. (We) say there will be no security or stability (for Italy) as long as a single Italian soldier remains on Iraq's land," the statement said.

As with the previous statement, it was not accompanied by a picture or video of the captive or any identification papers.

Fears of a renewed wave of kidnappings of foreigners in Iraq also have been raised after gunmen seized four Egyptians after stopping a minibus carrying technicians to their jobs at a mobile telephone company in western Baghdad yesterday.

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