BAGHDAD, Iraq — Insurgents stepped up their campaign to stop Sunni Arabs from joining government security forces, killing 15 police recruits in a suicide attack today and fatally shooting three soldiers who recently had entered the Iraqi army, officials said.

Both attacks occurred in Anbar province, a mostly Sunni area west of Baghdad where some of Iraq's worst terrorist attacks and battles between Sunni-led insurgents and U.S. forces have taken place since the Iraq war began more than three years ago.

On Tuesday, Anbar Gov. Maamoun Sami Rashid al-Alwani narrowly escaped a suicide car bomb attack on his convoy as he headed to work in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province. The attack killed 10 Iraqi civilians and wounded five of al-Alwani's bodyguards, the U.S. military said.

Today, a suicide bomber blew himself up while standing in a line of recruits outside Fallujah's police headquarters, killing 15 people and wounding 30, said police 1st Lt. Omar Ahmed. Thirteen of the dead were recruits and two were policemen, Ahmed said.

The bomber, dressed in civilian clothes, struck outside the entrance of the police building, police said. His hidden bomb exploded several minutes after he joined the crowd of recruits waiting to enter the building and apply for jobs, Ahmed said.

At about the same time, police found the bodies of three soldiers from Fallujah who had been shot and dumped in Khaldiyah, a city west of their hometown, said Dr. Rafie Mahmoud.

On Sunday, the three men had graduated from basic training as part of the first all-Sunni class in the Iraqi army. On Tuesday, the bodies of four other Iraqi soldiers from that class were found in Ramadi, officials said.

In Baghdad, Iraq's parliament met today for only the third time since it was elected last year. In an opening speech, parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni Arab, urged the lawmakers to be "the healers" of Iraq's deep sectarian divisions.

Prime Minister-designate Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, is in the process of choosing a Cabinet for the new unity government from Iraq's complex mix of political parties controlled by majority Shiites and minority Sunni Arabs and Kurds.

TEHRAN, Iran — A top Revolutionary Guards commander said Tuesday that Israel would be Iran's first retaliatory target if attacked by the United States.Gen. Mohammad Ebrahim Dehghani also said Israel was not prepared to go war against Iran. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly spoken out against Israel and threatened to wipe it "off the map.""We have announced that whenever America does make any mischief, the first place we target will be Israel," the semiofficial Iranian Student News Agency quoted Dehghani as saying."We will definitely resist ... U.S. B-52 (bombers)."President Bush has said a military option remained on the table if Iran did not agree to international demands for it to stop enriching uranium. However, he also has said Washington wanted to solve the dispute over Iran's nuclear program through diplomacy.