The two bloodiest attacks occurred south of the capital Baghdad in an area dubbed ‘The Triangle of Death’.
Hospital attacked
A suicide car bomber attacked a hospital, killing 34 people and wounding dozens more.
The explosives-packed car detonated as Iraqi security forces were gathered outside Mahmoudiya General Hospital.
"I was leaving the hospital with my one-and-a-half-year-old son in my arms when the explosion happened," Hoda Ali, 30, wounded on her face and arms, said.
"I was knocked down by the force of the blast and when I came to, my son was no longer in my arms. I found him among the dead," she added.
Iraqi Police believe the Secretary-General of the Iraqi Workers Party, a member of parliament, was also killed.
Witnesses at first suggested the car bomb had been parked outside of the hospital.
But US military spokesman Sergeant David Abrams said the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber who did not penetrate the hospital security perimeter.
"At this time it appears that four of our soldiers were wounded, but they are not life-threatening injuries," he said.
The soldiers, part of a civil affairs' team, had gone to the hospital and "were assessing the facility for upgrades at the time of the attack," he said.
But most of those killed and injured were civilians.
In a separate attack, in Mahmoudiya, an army colonel was killed in a roadside explosion.
Market targetted
And another suicide car bomber attacked a crowded market in Hilla, killing at least 14 people and wounding more than 20 others.
A little known group called "The Supporters for the Sunni
Community" claimed responsibility for the attack, an internet statement said.
Near Baiji, in north central Iraq, two Iraqi soldiers were killed and seven wounded by a roadside bomb.
Further north, near Hawijah, five people were shot dead, three of them soldiers, when gunmen opened fire on an army vehicle.
Authorities have also found the bodies of two men and two women, strangled or shot dead, in Yussufiyah, on the southern outskirts of the capital.
Attacks to increase
This latest unrest comes just three weeks ahead of elections for a four-year parliament, the final stage in Iraq's transition to democracy since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Iraqi government spokesman Leith Kubba warned that violence would likely increase over the coming weeks as rebels sought to disrupt the election.
The Defence Ministry said earlier that soldiers had found a car west of Baghdad filled with children's toys booby-trapped with hand grenades and explosives.
Two people have been detained.
The bombings are the latest in a series of suicide attacks and car bomb blasts that have killed nearly 200 people since last Friday.
Many of the recent attacks have been sectarian, with Sunni Arab militants targeting Shi'ite Muslim communities.
Foreign troop withdrawal
But Iraqi officials are expressing hope that a timetable will soon be set for the withdrawal of foreign forces.
And with the US Congress clamouring for an exit strategy, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has hinted that a reduction in US forces could come "fairly soon."
She said that as Iraqi security forces were trained to face the insurgency, the number of outside troops "is clearly going to come down."
"The American forces are not going to be needed in the numbers that they are there for all that much longer," she said on US television.
US troops in Iraq currently number about 158,000, up some 20,000 on their normal level because of a short-term force increase to ensure security for last month's referendum on the constitution and the December 15 election.