BAGHDAD (AFP) - Thirteen Iraqis were killed over the past 24 hours in bomb blasts around the country, while nine people, including a three-year-old child, were hurt in a gunfight, officials said.
The bloodshed came amid warnings from US and Iraqi officials of a surge in attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began on Friday.
At least six people, three of them policemen, died after a car bomb exploded late Sunday as a police convoy drove past a coffee shop, the interior ministry said.
"The attack occurred at 10:55 pm (1955 GMT) when a car bomb exploded, packed with 500 to 600 kilograms of explosives," said ministry spokesman Adnan Abdel Rahman, adding that there were 11 policemen among the 26 wounded.
Muslims, who fast all day long during Ramadan, often stay out late at night, visiting with friends at places like the coffee house.
In the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, five Iraqi civilians were killed and 15 others wounded when a car bomb exploded on a bridge on Sunday, the US military said.
"The blast occurred after the driver of the car bomb collided with another car. Several other cars were destroyed," it said.
Iraqi forces secured the area and transported the injured in ambulances to nearby hospitals, while firefighters battled to put out the blaze.
Adding to the death toll, two Iraqi civilians died in separate roadside bomb blasts in Baghdad on Monday, police said.
"A civilian car was hit in the explosion and the driver was killed," a police officer told AFP on the road near the Ghazaliya neighborhood in the west of the city.
The bomb exploded as a military convoy sped by.
An Iraqi student was killed and two others wounded in another bomb blast near Baghdad university, doctors said. Charred books littered the pavement around the blast site.
In the restive city of Baquba, northeast of the capital, seven policemen, a woman and her three-year-old child were hurt in a gunfight between police and insurgents, police and medics said.
"We were in three police vehicles patroling the southeastern district of Baquba just after midnight when we came across a suspicious-looking car," said a police officer at the scene.
"The people inside opened fire on our patrol and were joined by others in a pick-up truck who also started to shoot at us," he said.
The police retaliated with automatic weapons.
Baquba, which lies northeast of Baghdad, has been one of Iraq's major trouble spots for months, with relentless attacks against Iraqi security forces and US troops.