Baghdad, Iraq ? Iraq’s justice minister, Malik Dohan al-Hassan, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, but five of his bodyguards were killed when a suicide car bomber attacked his convoy as he drove from his home in the capital Saturday.

At nearly the same time, a car bomb exploded outside the Iraqi National Guard headquarters in Mahmudiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing two and injuring 47 others.

Most of those injured in the Mahmudiyah attack were job applicants waiting to get into the National Guard’s office, according to hospital officials.

Gunmen also ambushed and killed Iskandariyah Police Chief Rahim Ali as he drove to work in the town, south of Baghdad, The Associated Press reported.

Saturday’s violence comes on the heels of a series of stunning attacks against high-level Iraqi officials and important buildings earlier this week.

Militants killed the governor of Nineveh province when they attacked his convoy 60 miles south of the northern city of Mosul on Wednesday. On Thursday, 10 people were killed, including three Iraqi National Guard officers, when a car bomb exploded outside the Green Zone, the tightly guarded compound in central Baghdad housing key Iraqi government offices and the U.S. and British embassies.

In another car bombing, on Friday near Iraq’s border with Syria, a suicide bomber attacked a National Guard office, killing 11.

Witnesses at the scene of the Baghdad attack Saturday said they saw the suicide bomber parked near a highway underpass shortly before the explosion. As al-Hassan’s five-vehicle convoy made its way to the highway, witnesses said the suicide attacker sped toward the vehicles and detonated the explosives.

“It was a horrible scene,” said Dhuwaya Emhel, 50, who was drinking her morning tea with her grandsons in her thatch-roofed home about 200 feet from where the car bomb detonated. “A skull and parts of the car came flying in front of our house.”

Aides said al-Hassan was not injured in the explosion.

“The bodyguards maneuvered to stop the suspect’s car when it was trying to approach the minister’s car,” said the aide, who did not want to be identified. “They sacrificed their lives for the minister’s safety.”

Soon after the attack, a statement posted on an Islamist Web site said the attack was carried out by an insurgent organization led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the alleged mastermind behind a series of kidnappings and bombings in Iraq.