BAGHDAD, Iraq -- As usual, the attacks struck without warning, and the targets were mundane: a restaurant shredded by a car bomb, a market sprayed with bullets from driveby shooters, a coffee shop rocked by explosives hidden on motorcycles left outside.

''I was sitting inside my restaurant when about six cars parked nearby and their passengers came inside and ordered food," owner Ahmed al-Dawoudi said. ''Seconds later, I heard a big explosion and the restaurant was turned into twisted wreckage and rubble. Blood and pieces of flesh were everywhere."

When it was over Thursday, 39 victims had been added to the Iraqi insurgency's bloody campaign to undermine the new government.

Iraqi and U.S. forces have stepped up operations to answer the onslaught that has killed at least 814 people since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his Cabinet five weeks ago, but militants staged a rapid-fire series of attacks across a swath of northern Iraq.

In Tuz Khormato, 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 al-Dawoudi's 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 11 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 neighborhood of Hurriyah, killing nine people, the interior and defense ministries said. Two other attacks in the Baghdad area killed four people and injured three.

As part of the campaign against insurgents, Iraq's government launched in Baghdad on Sunday the biggest Iraqi offensive since Saddam Hussein's fall two years ago.

Officials say 40,000 soldiers and police, supported by U.S. forces, have thrown a cordon around the city of 6 million people in an effort to cut off access. Before the offensive, authorities controlled only eight of Baghdad's 23 entrances, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said.

Police patrols and checkpoints are increasingly visible around Baghdad's dusty streets as the operation intensifies.

''By organizing our forces and devising security plans, we will be able in the next few months to significantly reduce terrorism and killings," Jabr said.