BAGHDAD, (Reuters) – Bombs across Iraq killed fourteen people on Tuesday, police said, including a child hit by a blast outside his primary school in the north of the country.

Pupils were leaving the school after finishing their classes when the bomb placed in a cart in the northern city of Mosul was detonated, killing four people and wounding 12.

Some school pupils were among the wounded. The blast also killed a two-year-old girl and two adults in an adjacent market.

Violence across Iraq has fallen, but militants frequently demonstrate their ability to carry out lethal attacks.

A spate of bombings in the past few days has come as Iraq tries to prepare its security forces to take responsibility from U.S. troops, who are set to withdraw from Iraqi towns by mid-2009 and from Iraq completely by the end of 2011.

Many are most likely aimed at reigniting ethno-sectarian violence ahead of crucial provincial elections in January.

In a second attack, a roadside bomb targeting an army patrol killed five soldiers in Hilla, south of Baghdad, police and an eyewitness said.

“It hit the first vehicle. The whole thing exploded and burned to the ground,” eyewitness Ali al-Jubouri told Reuters.

In the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, a car bomb killed five men and wounded 30, including five children, Sabih Hussein, a senior medic in the city’s main hospital, told Reuters.