Car bombs target Basra police stations
Gunmen kill Baghdad's deputy police chief and his son
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 Violence is escalating in the run-up to the January 30 elections.
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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Two nearly simultaneous car bombs exploded late Monday near Iraqi police stations in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, police said.
Police said only the two suicide bombers died the attack and no one else was hurt.
Police said the attacks were carried out around 10 p.m. (2 p.m. ET), one targeting a police station in central Basra and the other hitting a police internal affairs office. Police said there was slight structural damage to the buildings.
Basra is the second largest city in Iraq and houses the headquarters of British troops in Iraq.
The city has not been hit with large-scale insurgent activity as other portions of the country have, but a series of car bombings in April killed nearly 70 people there.
Earlier Monday, Baghdad deputy police chief Gen. Amer Ali Nayef was killed in an attack outside his home, the latest assassination of an Iraqi official in advance of January 30 national elections.
Gunmen killed Nayef and his son, Lt. Khaled Nayef -- also a police officer -- as they left their home in southern Baghdad's al Dora neighborhood, a police official said.
Several other attacks in Iraq claimed more than a dozen lives Monday, including two U.S. soldiers with Task Force Baghdad.
The two soldiers were killed and four were wounded by a bomb blast in southwest Baghdad, the military said in a press release. The roadside bomb struck a patrol, destroying a Bradley fighting vehicle.
In Samarra, north of Baghdad, insurgents attacked a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol, killing two Iraqi soldiers and wounding one, the U.S. military said.
Two U.S. soldiers were slightly hurt but returned to duty, said a spokesman for the 1st Infantry Division in Tikrit.
Separate from the Basra attacks, two other suicide bombings were reported Monday.
One on the outskirts of southern Baghdad killed seven people, including three police officers, Iraqi police said. An attacker drove his vehicle into the courtyard of a police station, where it exploded, police said.
The attacker may have used a police vehicle or painted a vehicle to resemble a police car, officials said.
In the other suicide attack, a car bomb killed four security forces soldiers and damaged a building at the entrance of an Iraqi border security forces base in Rubai'a, about 105 miles (170 kilometers) northwest of Mosul, an official with the Mosul governor's office said.
Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi acknowledged an escalation of violence as the January 30 elections approach. But he vowed not to delay them and said "there will be no safe haven" for "terrorists in Iraq."
Iraqi and U.S. officials have long warned there could be a spike in violence before the elections, as insurgents tried to disrupt them. They have worked to convince many Iraqis that it will be safe to vote.
Two schools scheduled to be used as polling places were attacked Monday in northern Baghdad.
Explosives detonated at the main gate of al-Shuruk High School for Girls, damaging the gate and exterior fence, police said. No casualties were reported.
In the same neighborhood, police said an insurgent died while trying to detonate explosives at the Salah al-Din Middle School for Boys.
Other officials killed
Among the other Iraqi officials killed in the past week were Baghdad's provincial governor and the security chief for Iraq's Independent Election Commission in Diyala province.
Three authority figures were targeted on Sunday.
A former Interior Ministry official, Col. Midhat al-Ubaidi, was assassinated in eastern Baghdad during a drive-by shooting, a ministry spokesman said.
Al-Ubaidi, chief of the Iraqi National Accord's administration bureau, was driving his daughter to school at the time, the party said. The girl was wounded and was in critical condition at Kindi Hospital.
Brig. Fayiz Sabeeh with the Mansour passports office, was wounded Sunday along Baghdad's notorious Haifa Street. Two of his guards were killed.
Contrary to an earlier report, Brig. Mohammed Mudhafar Al-Badri, the city's deputy police chief, was not killed in a drive-by shooting.
Other developments
Fifty percent of Americans believe the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, and 59 percent say the war there is going badly for the United States, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday. Fifty-six percent said they disapproved of President Bush's handling of the war. Only 28 percent said it is very likely or somewhat likely that peace and security would be established in the next year. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. (Full story)Ukraine's outgoing President Leonid Kuchma ordered his defense and foreign ministers Monday to draw up plans to call home his nation's nearly 1,600 troops in Iraq during the first half of 2005, his office said. The country was already expected to pull its troops, but no timetable had been announced. Viktor Yushchenko, who recently won the election replace Kuchma, has vowed to call the soldiers home. (Full story) Britain will send an additional 400 troops to Iraq, British Defense Secretary Geoffrey Hoon told the House of Commons on Monday. The 1st Battalion, Royal Highland Fusiliers -- based in Cyprus -- will deploy in the southeastern portion of the country ahead of the January 30 elections, he said. (Full story)U.S. Embassy officials met during the weekend with representatives of an influential group of Sunni clerics, who have offered to end their boycott of the elections, spokesmen for the embassy and clerics said Monday. "We asked that the American forces put forward a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops," said Omar Ragib Zaydan, a spokesman for Muslim clerics. "In return, we will call off our boycott of the elections."An explosion Sunday at an ammunition storage area killed seven Ukrainian soldiers and a Kazakh soldier, said Multi-National Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Artur Domanski. Seven Ukrainians and four Kazaks were wounded in the blast. The incident, believed to be an accident, is under investigation. An explosives disposal team was detonating ordnance near the town of al-Suwaira, about 31 miles (51 kilometers) south of Baghdad, Domanski said. Nearly 1,600 Ukrainian soldiers and 30 Kazakhs are serving in Iraq. (Full story) CNN's Mohammad Tawfeeq and Cal Perry contributed to this report.
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
