BAGHDAD, Iraq - Some areas of Iraq will probably be too unsafe to take part in the Jan. 30 elections, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said today, and he promised to increase the size of the army in the face of a bloody insurgency, whose latest victims included 13 Iraqis killed by two bombings.

Allawi said the government had allocated $2.2 billion to expand the army from 100,000 to 150,000 troops and provide it with new weaponry. Iraq's armed forces are poorly trained and often under-equipped, making them an easy target for insurgents who want to scuttle the elections.

He acknowledged that some areas of Iraq likely would be too unsafe to participate in the landmark balloting for a constitutional assembly. The country's volatile Anbar province west of Baghdad and areas in the north around Mosul have seen little preparation for the vote.

"Hostile forces are trying to hamper this event and to inflict damage and harm on the march and the guarantee for the participation of all in the elections," Allawi said. "Certainly, there will be some pockets that will not be able to participate in the elections for these reasons, but we think that it will not widespread."

Allawi is a candidate in the election and has been increasingly visible in recent days. The news conference was his second in as many days, and he stood before several Iraqi flags and signs that read "Security and Safety First."

Meanwhile, violence across Iraq continued. A roadside bomb that missed a passing U.S. military convoy killed seven Iraqis in a minibus. The victims were traveling in Yussifiyah, 10 miles south of Baghdad, when the blast occurred, said the director of the town's hospital, Dawoud al-Taie.

A suicide car bomber who targeted a police headquarters in Tikrit killed six people, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Neal O'Brien said, and police officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said 12 were wounded.

The last two days have seen a new surge of insurgent attacks in the weeks before the balloting, with four roadside bombings and suicide strikes on Iraqi and American forces Monday.

While Shiites are expected to vote in large numbers, Sunni Arabs, who make up about 20 percent of Iraq's estimated 26 million people, say it is far too dangerous to hold the election this month, and many are refusing to participate. Failure by the Sunni Arabs to participate would undermine the election's credibility.

In the news conference, Allawi said the government was reaching out to tribal and religious leaders in some of Iraq's volatile regions to try to get them to participate in the vote. He said he expected the country to reach a consensus in the coming days that elections were necessary.

In other violence today, an explosion at dawn tore through a gas pipeline between Kirkuk and a refinery in Beiji. An official with the Northern Oil Co. said the pipeline was destroyed and would take five days to repair.

The official said another blast hit a few pipelines running next to one another in the Zegheitoun area, 35 miles southwest of Kirkuk. The extent of the damage was not yet known.

Insurgents repeatedly have targeted Iraq's oil infrastructure, denying the country much-needed reconstruction money. Oil exports to Turkey, the outlet for Iraq's northern fields, were halted because of a bombing in mid-November.