BAGHDAD, Iraq — Two powerful car bombs exploded at police stations in Baghdad on Monday, killing at least six Iraqi officers, injuring more than 20 civilians and announcing that the insurgency here has not ended with the arrest of Saddam Hussein.

"People did this to say, 'We can do this even though you caught Saddam,' " said Salem Abed Ali, 40, who was rocked at his breakfast table on Monday morning, along with his wife and two children, when a bomb exploded across the street, at a police station in the Husseiniya neighborhood.

In his national address on Sunday, President Bush cautioned Americans that the "capture of Saddam Hussein does not mean the end of violence in Iraq." His warning appeared to be confirmed in the rubble, shredded cars and bloodied bits of humans at the sites of the two bombings Monday, one of them at a place where U.S. military investigators work but had not yet shown up for the day.

U.S. officials, conceding that their knowledge of the guerrillas is weak, have blamed such attacks largely on loyalists to Saddam, Iraqi Islamic extremists and Muslims from outside Iraq. The question in the coming weeks will be whether the insurgency will grow or shrink with Saddam's return to power no longer a realistic prospect. Some Iraqis believe Saddam's capture may actually fuel the insurgency.

"Of course there will be violence, and resistance will increase," said Col. Ibrahim Mutlak, director of police patrols for Salahadin Province, where Saddam's hometown, Tikrit, is. "Lots of people didn't want to join the resistance because they didn't want to be called Saddam supporters. But now all the people who oppose the Americans will join."

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In Tikrit, where support for Saddam remains strong, U.S. soldiers on Monday dispersed crowds of people expressing anger at his arrest. In Ramadi and Khaldiya, two other Saddam strongholds, huge crowds chanted in support of him and fired off weapons on Monday evening, apparently because of rumors that he had not in fact been captured.

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