A car bomb exploded outside a Baghdad coffee shop Saturday, killing two people and wounding 11 others, police in the Iraqi capital said.

The blast happened around 9 p.m. (2 p.m. ET) Saturday in the al-Shurta al-Rabaa neighborhood, a predominantly Shiite section of southwestern Baghdad.

With those deaths, the Iraqi Interior Ministry announced Sunday that 164 people had been killed throughout the country in August. This figure incorporates information from Iraq's interior, defense and health ministries.

A CNN tally indicates that more than 270 people died last month in violence throughout Iraq, however.

Official government death tolls have historically been lower than unofficial figures and daily tallies from media and other organizations.

Saturday's bombing caps a particularly turbulent few months in the Middle Eastern nation.

Violence had generally dropped in Iraq in recent years compared with the middle of the past decade, when Sunni-Shiite conflict raged during the height of the Iraq war.

However, it hit a nearly two-year peak in July with 325 deaths reported, the Interior Ministry has said. That was the deadliest single month since August 2010, when the toll was 426, the ministry said. U.S. troops completed their withdrawal from Iraq in December.

The most recent violence includes a wave of shootings and bombings August 16 that killed more than 80 people and wounded more than 270 across the country.

Insurgents carried out attacks in Baghdad and Kirkuk, Salaheddin, Anbar, Wasit and Diyala provinces, according to police and Interior Ministry officials.

The violence came in the final days of the holy month of Ramadan, when Iraqis traditionally fill shops and markets to prepare for the Eid feast.

Iraqi authorities blamed al-Qaida for what they describe as coordinated assaults targeting mostly Shiite areas.