[originaltext] Insurgents killed 38 people in a series of rapid-fire attacks

Insurgents killed 38 people in a series of rapid-fire attacks Thursday, including three suicide car bombings within an hour and a drive-by shooting at a busy Baghdad market that mtchet~ up the bloody campaign to undermine Iraq’s government.
   Iraq’s interior minister, meanwhile, claimed the government offensive seeking to root out rebels in Bagh dad had scored big gains, saying this week’s sweep by Iraqi soldiers and police captured 700 suspected insurgents and killed 28 militants.
   Iraqi and U.S. forces have stepped up operations to answer an insurgent onslaught that has killed at least 814 people since Prime Mmister rorahim al-Jaafari announced his Cabinet five weeks ago, but militants staged deadly attacks across a swath of northern Iraq.
   In Tuz Khonuato, a popular highway stop, 55 miles south of the oil-rich town of Kirkuk, a suicide car bomber targeted bodyguards for Iraq’s Kurdish deputy prime minister as they ate at a restaurant. The blast killed 12 people.
   Earlier in Kirkuk, a suicide car bomber trying to attack a convoy of civilian contract workers killed a young boy and three other Iraqi bystanders and wounded ! 1 people.
   Another suicide bomber killed four people and wounded four in Baqouba, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. Hours later, two parked motorcycles rigged with bombs blew up near a coffee shop there, killing five Iraqis and wounding 13.
   In the capital, men in three speeding cars sprayed gunfire into a crowded market in the northern neigh borhood of Hurriyah, killing nine people, the interior and defense ministries said. Two other attacks in the Baghdad area killed four people and injured three.