Suicide attackers blew up explosives-laden vehicles next to an elementary school and a police station in a small northern Iraqi village on Sunday, killing at least 13 people, many of them children.

Police raised the death toll in a suicide bomb attack on a Shiite coffee shop in Baghdad to 21 today, with 25 others injured, while gunmen killed at least one man and wounded four in an attack on a Shiite bakery.

Two near simultaneous explosions in north-eastern Baghdad today killed three people and wounded 16, a day after the defence ministry said security forces would expand a crackdown into the eastern parts of the capital, including Shiite militia strongholds.

A car bomb exploded in a busy Mosul market today and a mortar barrage struck near the Italian Embassy and an Iraqi National Guard base in Baghdad, killing three civilians and wounding at least seven.

US troops fought a gun battle overnight with insurgents near the Iraqi holy Shiite city of Najaf, killing 43 gunmen and destroying an anti-aircraft system belonging to the insurgents, the US military in Baghdad said.