BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents launched attacks in the strife-ridden city of Baqouba on Saturday, and nine people died, six of them insurgents, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. Attacks occurred in other cities north and south of Baghdad.

The attacks in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, occurred only two days after U.S. tanks and jets routed insurgents who assaulted police stations and government offices there as part of a widespread offensive that killed about 100 people nationwide.

In the Saturday attacks, rebels targeted offices of two political parties - one of them run by Iraq's prime minister - a police station and a government building in Baqouba. U.S. soldiers and Iraqi security forces took up defensive positions across the city, the center of Iraq's orange-growing region.

A taxi apparently filled with weapons and ammunition blew up a street about 250 yards from one of the political party offices which was attacked earlier, witnesses reported.

Elsewhere, insurgents killed two Iraqi National Guardsmen in an ambush in Mahmoudiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. A police officer was also killed in a separate attack Saturday, said the director of the Mahmoudiyah general hospital, Dawoud al-Taei.

A car bomb exploded Saturday in the Kurdish stronghold of Irbil, injuring the culture minister of the pro-American Kurdistan Democratic Party and killing his bodyguard and injuring 15 people - four of them children.

Gunfire broke out Saturday in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, and ambulances raced to the scene. It was unclear who was shooting and why since the city has been generally quiet since an agreement several weeks ago to end clashes between U.S. soldiers and radical Shiite militiamen.

Several strong explosions rumbled through central Baghdad before dawn Saturday but the origin was unclear.

The attacks were the latest in a wave of violence in the days leading to the transfer of sovereignty on Wednesday. Most of the attacks have been directed at the interim Iraqi government's security forces - the foundation of its power.

Also Saturday, the U.S. military said a soldier died of wounds suffered in an attack on a U.S. patrol in central Baghdad. A U.S. statement did not say when the attack occurred.

In the Baqouba attacks, insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at the offices of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said party member Maitham Ibrahim. Three party members died and two were injured, hospital officials said.