Three suicide car bombings struck within an hour and two parked motorcycles exploded in northern Iraq today, while gunmen in speeding cars opened fire on a crowded market in Baghdad in a series of attacks that killed at least 38 people.

Almost 5,000 Russian soldiers were killed in the breakaway republic of Chechnya last year and more than 13,000 were wounded, the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted military officials as saying today in the first apparent acknowledgement of high casualties in the near 3 1/2-year-old conflict.