By Ahmed Rasheed and Aseel Kami
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Suicide bombers killed more than 50 people in apparently coordinated attacks on Iraqi security forces in Baghdad and elsewhere on Wednesday, less than a week before U.S. troops formally end combat operations.
The bombings also wounded more than 200 people, underscoring how fragile Iraq's security is, and how tense its political situation, more than five months after an election that produced no outright winner and as yet no new government.
In the southern city of Kut, 150 km (95 miles) southeast of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber killed at least 26 policemen and wounded 87, said Lieutenant Colonel Aziz al-Amarah, commander of the rapid response police force in the province of Wasit.
"Parts of the building collapsed and there are still policemen's bodies, including the police chief, under the rubble," Amarah said by telephone.
In Baghdad, a suicide truck bomber killed 15 people and wounded at least 56 others in an attack on another police station, Interior Ministry and police sources said.
Parts of the police station in Baghdad's northern Qahira district collapsed and surrounding houses were severely damaged, the Interior Ministry source said.
Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim al-Moussawi put the death toll at four, with 35 wounded.
In the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala, southwest of Baghdad, at least 29 people were wounded when a car bomb went off near a police station, a health department source said.
Iraq is on high alert for attacks by suspected al Qaeda-linked groups following the election, and ahead of the end of the 7-1/2-year U.S. combat mission on August 31.
In Baghdad's al-Amil district, gunmen killed one policeman and wounded another at a checkpoint. In the mainly Shi'ite district of Kadhimiya, a car bomb killed at least three people and wounded 14 others, a police source said.
In Buhriz, about 60 km (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, gunmen placed bombs near the houses of policemen and raised the flag of al Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate on one of the buildings, police sources said. Five people were wounded.
Other attacks in Diyala province, in the westerly Anbar province, and the northern city of Kirkuk brought the overall death toll from the seemingly coordinated attacks to over 50. The security forces appeared to be the main target.
Last week, at least 57 recruits and soldiers were killed and 123 wounded in one of Iraq's bloodiest attacks this year when a suicide bomber blew himself up at an army recruitment centre in Baghdad.
More than 4,400 U.S. soldiers and at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the sectarian warfare and fierce insurgency unleashed after the invasion in 2003.
Overall violence has dropped sharply since the height of sectarian carnage in 2006-07. But bombings and killings continue daily, suggesting insurgents are trying to exploit the political vacuum as Iraq's leaders jostle for power.
(Additional reporting by Waleed Ibrahim in Baghdad, Aref Mohammed in Basra and Fadhel al-Badrani in Falluja; writing by Rania El Gamal; editing by Michael Christie)
