Baghdad, Iraq ? Insurgents instigated a second day of bombings in Iraq’s capital and beyond Saturday, staging a series of carefully coordinated and increasingly sophisticated assaults that killed at least 65 over two days and appeared timed to deflate hopes in Washington and Baghdad that the installation of the nation’s first democratically elected government would curb spiking violence.

At least 17 Iraqis and one U.S. soldier were killed in the bloodletting Saturday. The military also announced that six other U.S. soldiers had been killed and six wounded in Iraq since Thursday.

At least five car bombs rocked Baghdad on Saturday, the heart of the Iraqi government and American occupation, U.S. military spokesman Greg Kaufman said. Six more exploded in the northern city of Mosul, which also has seen frequent attacks.

Saturday’s attacks included a suicide bombing that targeted a joint U.S. military and Iraqi police patrol in western Baghdad, killing one Iraqi and wounding seven, including four policemen, police Maj. Mousa Abdul Karim said.

Minutes later, a second suicide bomber plowed into a civilian convoy near the offices of the National Dialogue Council, a coalition of 10 Sunni Arab factions that was negotiating for a stake in the new government. The blast killed at least one council guard and injured 18 other Iraqis, said police Capt. Kadhim Abbas at al-Yarmouk Hospital.

A third suicide car bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol exploded near the Mohammed Rasoul Allah Mosque in eastern Baghdad, killing two Iraqi women and a girl, and seriously wounding four soldiers, police Lt. Col. Ahmed Abboud Effait said.

Later, a fourth suicide attacker targeted an American patrol near al-Shaab stadium in eastern Baghdad, killing two civilians in passing cars and injuring four, police said.

Two Iraqis — a policeman and a former official in Saddam’s Baath Party — also died in shootings Saturday in Baghdad, police said.

At least five Iraqis were killed and 12 wounded in the attacks in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. Two U.S. soldiers also were injured.

Iraqi men rush to the scene after a car bomb exploded outside a building holding a meeting of senior Sunni leaders from the Council on National Dialogue, in Baghdad, Iraq. According to Baghdad police, two people died in the attack Saturday and at least 18 were injured.

A bomb hidden in a Mosul shrine killed a woman and two children, and injured one American soldier, the military said. A suicide car bomber targeting an American convoy killed two more Iraqis and wounded three, and another targeting Iraqi police injured four officers and five civilians, the military said in a statement.

Two civilian bystanders were wounded when a roadside bomb aimed at a police patrol exploded south of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, Iraqi army Brig. Hamid Al-Timimi said.

West of Baghdad, the U.S. military said three civilians were killed and at least one wounded when rockets and mortars slammed into Fallujah. A young girl was among those killed. Officials there reported nine people injured in the attack 40 miles west of the capital.

The American deaths announced Saturday included one American killed Saturday in gunfire in Khaldiyah, 75 miles west of Baghdad, two killed Friday in a roadside bombing west of Baghdad and four killed and two injured in another bombing Thursday in Tal Afar, near the Syrian border.

Four more U.S. soldiers were wounded when their Humvee rolled into a ditch Friday night near Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

At least 1,581 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.