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(AP) Two suicide bombers on Thursday killed at least 34 people and injured 70 in an attack on the home of an anti-terrorism officer in northern Iraq, while three roadside bombs in Baghdad killed seven others, authorities said.

The attacks came one day after car bombs in two Shiite villages near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul killed 16 civilians and injured more than two dozen, in a surge of violence in Iraq's troubled north following the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from cities to bases outside urban centers at the end of June.

Iraq is trying to build on security gains made in the past two years, though political reconciliation among the country's factions remains a troubled process and there is concern that insurgent attacks could trigger a slide back into sectarian violence.

Maj. Gen. Khalid al-Hamadani, the police chief of the northern Ninevah province, said the first bomber, wearing a police uniform and carrying a radio and a pistol, knocked on the door of a police officer who works as an investigator in the anti-terrorism police department in Tal Afar city.

When the officer opened the door around 6:30 a.m., the bomber detonated his explosive belt, killing the officer, his wife and son, al-Hamadani said. As people gathered near the scene, another suicide bomber detonated his explosives belt.

At about 7:30 a.m. in Baghdad, two roadside bombs exploded near an outdoor market in the Shiite district of Sadr City, killing six and injuring 31, said Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Mousawi, spokesman for the city's operations command center. Explosives experts defused a third bomb in the area.

Hassan Abdullah, a 32-year-old vegetable salesman, said he heard the first blast and went to see what was happening when a second bomb hidden in trash about 100 meters away exploded. He said he fell to the ground and was taken to a hospital with hand and leg injuries.

In the Karrada district of central Baghdad, one civilian was killed and five were injured in a roadside bomb attack on the convoy of Central Bank Gov. Sinan al-Shibibi, a police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Three of the injured were guards of the governor, who himself was unharmed.

The bomb hit a vehicle carrying guards at the rear of the convoy as well as a nearby civilian car.

Also in Baghdad, a bomb concealed in a bicycle parked at a market in the Shiite-dominated area of Shurta al-Rabeaa exploded, wounding two people and damaging three shops, police said. Three other people were wounded, when a bomb exploded in a minibus in southwestern Baghdad.

A massive bomb blast Thursday in central Afghanistan killed 25 people including 13 primary school students, destroying shops and scattering pieces of the vehicle that carried the explosives over a huge area, police said. Another bombing in the south killed two NATO soldiers.

The central Afghanistan bomb was detonated in an overturned truck carrying timber, killing 21 civilians and four policemen in Logar province, south of Kabul, ministry spokesman Zemerai Bashary said. At least 13 of those killed were children from nearby schools, said Kamaluddin Zadran, a provincial official.

Another two schoolchildren were wounded and three others are still missing, Zadran said.

Provincial police chief Mustafa Khan said the truck had overturned late Wednesday as it traveled the main road from Logar to Kabul. After police arrived to clear the road on Thursday morning, militants apparently remotely detonated a bomb planted in the back of the truck among the timber, he said.

The power of the blast in Mohammad Agha district, close to shops that collect milk from farmers, sent truck pieces flying more than a mile (2 kilometers), said a second police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

AP Television News footage from the scene showed the explosion left a huge crater in the road. People collected the remains of the dead, wrapping them in white and colored shrouds. Nearby mud houses had collapsed. Twisted and charred remains of a police vehicle caught in the blast were loaded onto a truck.

Lal Mohammad, a local police officer, was working his land about 100 meters (yards) away when the explosion happened.

"I saw a big fire and smoke from the main road," Mohammad said.

He ran toward the site of the explosion, and saw dead people and body parts strewn around.

"I collected five bodies myself and then picked up body parts," Mohammad said.

The explosion was so strong that a wall in Mohammad's house, about 200 yards (meters) away, collapsed.

The roadside and suicide bombings are the militants' weapon of choice in Afghanistan. The number of such attacks have spiked this year, as thousands of additional American troops joined the fight. Majority of the victims in such attacks have been civilians.

Meanwhile, two NATO soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing Wednesday in southern Afghanistan, the military alliance said in a statement. The statement, issued Thursday, did not identify the location of the blast or the nationalities of the victims.

NATO forces in the south include U.S. Marines engaged in a major anti-Taliban offensive in Helmand province. Troops from Britain, Canada and other nations also fight under the alliance's command in the volatile region.

In the southern province of Zabul, Afghan and coalition troops battled Taliban militants who attacked a government center in Suri district early Thursday. Fifteen insurgents were killed and another was detained, said provincial police chief Abdul Rehman Sarjang.

No casualties were sustained among Afghan and foreign troops, Sarjang said.

Southern Afghanistan is the center of the Taliban-led insurgency. The hard-line Islamist militia has made a violent comeback in recent years since the 2001 U.S. invasion.

(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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