BAGHDAD, Iraq – A suicide car bomber blasted an American convoy north of Baghdad, and American troops battled insurgents west of the capital yesterday as a wave of violence across Iraq’s Sunni Muslim heartland killed at least 27 people.

American forces pursued their search-and-destroy mission against the remaining holdouts in the former insurgent bastion of Fallujah, and to the north, American forces pressed an offensive to reclaim part of the city of Mosul from rebels.

Yesterday, a suicide attacker drove his bomb-laden car into an American convoy during fierce fighting in the town of Beiji, 155 miles north of the Baghdad, killing 10 people and wounding 12, including three American soldiers. Another attack on a convoy of civilian contractors in Beiji caused no casualties.

Elsewhere, a three-hour gun battle between insurgents and American forces after nightfall killed seven people and hurt 13 in Ramadi, a city west of Fallujah.

Insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades, mortar, and Kalashnikov rifles at American forces in the city center, Zayout district, and along the main highway in town, said Abdel Karim al-Hiti of Ramadi General Hospital.

Ramadi, about 70 miles west of Baghdad, falls within the restive Sunni Triangle area north and west of the capital, where the bulk of insurgent attacks have erupted.

Although fighting has ebbed in Fallujah, it has not ceased. The American military said pockets of insurgents remain even though American troops fully occupy the city.

Yesterday, heavy machine-gun fire and explosions rang out in south-central parts of the city as American Marines hunted remaining fighters.

Bullets snapped overhead, and Iraqis collecting bodies of the dead ran for cover behind walls and in buildings as Marines returned fire. After 15 minutes of fighting, three insurgents were dead and one Marine was slightly injured in the hand, officers said.

The rush of warplanes streaking through the low-lying clouds shook the city, and blasts sent smoke into the sky. The American military said air strikes yesterday were concentrated in southwestern Fallujah, destroying enemy positions.

Iraqi officials have acknowledged that insurgent leaders Omar Hadid and Sheik Abdullah al-Janabi, along with Jordanian terror boss Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, have not been captured and may have slipped away.

A man identified as Hadid appeared yesterday with three other hooded gunmen on LBCI Lebanese TV and dismissed claims that the Americans control the Fallujah.

“They did not know that they fell in the trap of death,” he said. He insisted that insurgents were advancing inside Fallujah toward Jolan and the downtown market, adding, “I challenge any force which claims to control Fallujah.”

Reports surfaced that 31 police officers had been kidnapped in the town of Rutba near the Jordanian border by armed men who stormed a hotel where the officers were staying.

The Karbala police officer who made the report said he escaped a raid Sunday by armed men in the hotel, according to a police spokesman.

The officer said about 20 men attacked the hotel, covering the captives’ heads with black bags and tying their hands before dragging them away, the spokesman said. The officer said he was beaten but was not abducted.

A deputy interior minister for administrative affairs, Adnan Asadi, said the abduction reports were “not true.” He said the police sent for training in Jordan had not returned to Iraq.

In Mosul, where insurgents launched an uprising last week, the situation appeared calmer, with American and Iraqi troops encountering isolated small-arms attacks, the military said.