Violence across Iraq killed 19 people on Tuesday, including eight who died in an attack on an army patrol, amid Iraq’s worst protracted period of unrest since 2008.

Violence across Iraq killed 19 people on Tuesday, including eight who died in an attack on an army patrol, amid Iraq's worst protracted period of unrest since 2008.

The bloodshed comes just weeks before Iraq is due to hold its first national vote since 2010, though the poll was thrown into disarray earlier Tuesday when the entire electoral commission resigned over political interference.

In Tuesday's deadliest attack, militants opened fire on an army patrol in Tarmiyah, just north of the capital, security and medical officials said.

Eight people were killed, including seven soldiers. Another 14, of whom 10 were soldiers, were wounded.

Attacks elsewhere in the country killed 11 people.

In Baghdad, a car bomb near a mosque in the Saidiyah neighborhood killed three people and wounded eight others.

Gun attacks and explosions in and around the restive cities of Baquba, Mosul and Tikrit -- all north of the capital -- left eight others dead. Among them were three policemen and a woman working in the office of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's political coalition.

More than 400 people have been killed so far this month and upwards of 2,100 since the beginning of the year, according to AFP figures based on reports from security and medical sources.