In the space of a few hours a suicide car bomber wrecked a police headquarters, killing 12, an attack on an Iraqi army base killed 15 people and five police officers were killed when a bomber walked into Mosul's main hospital and blew himself up.
The attack on the hospital's police post damaged the ward where casualties had been brought from the earlier incidents, responsibility for which was claimed by al Qaeda's Iraq wing, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
In Baghdad, six policemen were killed by a suicide bomber as they were pulling into their base, police said. The deputy head of a city police department was also assassinated.
The Mosul car bomber drove at a police headquarters at Bab al-Toob in the city centre, striking a rear wall to bring down a section of the old, two-storey building and devastate surrounding market stalls as people started the working day.
Ten police officers and two civilians were killed and eight people were wounded, the US military in Mosul said in a statement.
The Defence Ministry said a suicide bomber killed 15 people and wounded 15, mostly civilians, at an army post at Kasak, near Mosul. The US military put the dead at 16. Soldiers turned the bomber away from the base and he walked toward a crowd of civilians, the ministry said in a statement.
Medical staff in Mosul said most of the casualties were building workers from the base.
Responding to a report in a British newspaper, quoting unnamed Iraqi sources, that US officials this month met purported insurgents, US and Iraqi officials repeated that there are continual consultations with tribal leaders, clerics and others who profess to represent elements of the insurgency.
However, they were adamant that these were not negotiations and any talks had not involved the most violent groups such as Ansar al-Sunna, named by the Sunday Times, or Zarqawi's group.