BAGHDAD (AFP) – Two bombs have torn through the convoy of a high ranking Iraqi interior ministry official in east Baghdad, killing seven people but leaving the official unscathed.

In Iraq’s northern oil hub, Kirkuk, a suicide car bomber attacked a convoy carrying armed guards assigned to protect the industry, triggering a blast that killed five people and wounded 10, police Brigadier Adel Ibrahim said.

The US military also announced the deaths of three US soldiers in south Baghdad when a roadside bomb destroyed their vehicle on Saturday.

There has been a dramatic increase in attacks on US service personnel, with at least 50 killed since the beginning of October.

Hala Mohammed Shakr, head of the interior ministry’s financial affairs department, was driving through east Baghdad’s Mustansiriyah neighborhood when the bombs exploded, killing two bodyguards and setting two cars on fire, the security source said.

Five civilian bystanders were also killed and there was heavy damage to a nearby gas station and shops.

Al-Kindi hospital reported receiving eight wounded civilians.

Elsewhere in the city, a bomb exploded next to a passing convoy of security contractors, setting a vehicle ablaze and killing two bystanders, police said.

The blast on Ghadir Street in southeast Baghdad also wounded five people.

Another bomb killed one person and wounded two in the Amil neighborhood, a confessionally mixed area of southwest Baghdad that seen a number of attacks in the past.

South of the capital, a policeman and a civilian were killed in separate incidents near the city of Kut.

Two bodies partially eaten by fish were also pulled out of the Tigris river downstream of the capital near the town of Suwayrah.

North of Baghdad, police in Salaheddin province reported finding the bodies of 40 murder victims Saturday.

Saturday also saw the death of four US servicemen, three in the Baghdad bomb attack and a marine in the restive city of Fallujah, west of the capital.

The deaths bring to 2,759 the number of US servicemen killed in action or from other causes in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.