Insurgents bent on destabilizing Iraq have killed at least 41 people in numerous attacks scattered around the country, striking targets including a coffee shop, a wedding party convoy and a carload of off-duty soldiers, according to Belfast Telegraph.

The attacks are part of a months-long wave of killing that is the country's worst spate of bloodshed since 2008.

The violence is calling into question the security forces' ability to protect the country and raising fears that Iraq's sectarian and ethnic divisions are pushing it back towards the brink of civil war.

One of the day's boldest attacks happened near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, where militants set up a fake security checkpoint, captured five soldiers and shot them dead, said a police officer. The soldiers were dressed in civilian clothes and returning to base in a taxi.

In the capital Baghdad, a car bomb at a market in the south-eastern and largely Shiite neighbourhood of al-Ameen killed three civilians and wounded 13 others, authorities said. Three other civilians were killed and six wounded when a bomb attached to a car exploded while passing through the capital's eastern Zayona neighbourhood, police said. Another bomb went off in a commercial area in the western Ghazaliya area, killing two people and wounding seven others, officials said.

Later in the evening, police said a bomb tore through a coffee shop, killing three and wounding 16 others in Baghdad's northern Shaab neighbourhood.