Two suicide car bombers targeted a local police chief and a prominent Sunni sheik working with U.S. forces against al-Qaida in Iraq in a northern city on Tuesday, killing at least 19 people, authorities said. At least 42 people were killed or found dead across Iraq. The nearly simultaneous attacks in Beiji were the deadliest in a series of bombings in recent days as the terror network apparently steps up its promised Ramadan offensive as the end of the Islamic holy month draws near.

The attackers in the oil hub 155 miles north of Baghdad drove a minibus laden with explosives into the house of a local police chief and detonated an explosives-packed Toyota Land Cruiser outside the home of a leading member of the local Awakening Council, a group of Iraqis who have turned against extremists in the area.

A Sunni mosque about 100 yards away from the police chief's house was damaged and three of its guards were among at least 19 people killed, according to police and hospital officials. They also said 28 people were wounded and six houses destroyed in the blasts, which occurred within minutes of each other and some 500 yards apart.

Iraqi officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information, said the police chief, Col. Saad al-Nifoos, and the Sunni tribal official, Sheik Hamad al-Jibouri, survived.

The U.S. military said the targeted Awakening Council leader was Samir Ibrahim, not Sheik Hamad. It also said Ibrahim and the police chief had survived.

Saleh Jassim Moussa said two of his relatives from the neighborhood were killed.

The force of the blast was so strong, it shattered all the windows and ripped the doors from their frames in his home, only 100 yards away from the first explosion.

"It was a really huge explosion, we panicked and ran out but for minutes, we couldn't see anything because of the heavy smoke," said Moussa, 38, a government employee, who was reached by phone. "We're still digging through the rubble, looking for others."

Beiji is in the Sunni province of Salahuddin, which along with the vast Anbar province to the west is part of Iraq's Sunni heartland. The heartland has been the home base for the Sunni-led insurgency, but the U.S. military has cited recent success in getting local tribal leaders to join forces against the terror network.

"This is yet another failed attempt to break the will of the Iraqi people who just want to go on with their lives without violence, raise their children, earn a living and coexist together in a peaceful manner," said Lt. Col. Michael O. Donnelly, military spokesman for northern Iraq.

Three car bombs in Baghdad killed 15 people, including eight who died in an attack near the Shiite Khulani mosque, itself a target of a truck bombing in June that killed 87 people.

Also Tuesday morning, drive-by shooters killed the deputy police chief in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, police said.

A roadside bomb ripped through and outdoor market near a bus station in Jisr Diyala on Baghdad's southeastern outskirts, killing two civilians and wounding 10 others, police said.

In the southern neighborhood of Sadiyah, gunmen in a speeding car fatally shot a Shiite father and his two sons as they were leaving their home, police said. The police officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

The bullet-riddled bodies of three men in their 30s also were found on a highway in Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, apparent victims of so-called sectarian death squads largely run by Shiite militias.

Meanwhile, U.S. military said nine insurgents were killed and 21 suspects detained during operations Monday and Tuesday near Baghdad, Mosul, Beiji and Samarra. The operations were meant to disrupt al-Qaida in Iraq networks.

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Associated Press writers Katarina Kratovac and Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this story.