BAGHDAD, IRAQ – Four car bombs exploded at dusk yesterday, killing at least 23 people, including sidewalk diners and passengers at a bus station. The coordinated attacks served as a chilling reminder of how potent terrorists remain in the capital despite around-the-clock American and Iraqi troop patrols.

In all, at least 32 people were killed across Iraq, including a prominent Sunni law professor assassinated by gunmen. Jassim al-Issawi was a former judge who put his name forward at one point to join the committee drafting Iraq’s constitution. The assassination appeared aimed at intimidating Sunni Arabs willing to join Iraq’s efforts to create a stable political system.

The U.S. military said three soldiers were killed a day earlier during combat operations west of Baghdad near the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi.

The first three car bombs – clearly coordinated – went off almost simultaneously only blocks apart in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Shula where al-Issawi was killed only hours earlier. Two bombs exploded in front of a pair of restaurants, killing at least 11 and wounding 28. “The body parts of the dead were scattered everywhere, along with fragments of broken glass from nearby shops and the meat from the meals,” police Major Musa Abdul Karim, who was at the scene, said.

The third car bomb exploded when a suicide bomber rammed a nearby bus station, killing at least eight and wounding 20, police said. About 15 minutes later, a suicide car bomber struck an Iraqi army patrol in a nearby suburb, killing at least four bystanders, police said. The dead included a woman and a child. No Iraqi soldiers were among the wounded.

A fifth car bomb targeting an American military convoy missed, killing instead three Iraqis and wounded seven in Mosul. Four Iraqis also were killed in two roadside bombs and a group of children drove their bicycles over a bomb planted beneath the ground in Baqouba. A 9-year-old boy was killed and two others, aged 6 and 7, were wounded.