A U.S. occupations military sniper sits in the door of a helicopter Sunday as it patrols the skies over Baghdad in occupied holy land of Iraq.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Suicide bombers struck Monday against Iraqi security forces in two cities, killing 27 and injuring more than 20 others, officials said.

• In Mosul, a suicide bomber blew himself up among a group of policemen inside a hospital compound, killing 12 policemen and injuring four others, hospital officials said. An al-Qaida-linked group claimed responsibility. The Mosul attack occurred at the city's Jumhouri Teaching Hospital, hospital director Tahseen Ali Mahmoud al-Obeidi said. Witnesses said the bomber called the police officers over to him and then blew up among the crowd. "I heard an explosion. When I went to check, I saw bodies everywhere," al-Obeidi said. The ground was soaked with blood. Nurses collected pieces of flesh and body parts, putting them in bags.

  In a posting on a Web site, the al-Qaida in Iraq group, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said "a lion from the Martyrs Brigade" wearing an explosives belt managed to get inside a police post at the Mosul hospital. The claim could not be verified.

• Also Monday, a car bomb exploded outside the protective blast barriers of a provincial police headquarters in the city of Baqouba, killing 15 people and wounding 17, police Col. Mudhahar al-Jubouri said. Many of the victims were there to seek jobs as policemen, al-Jubouri said.