The violence ends the bloodiest Ramadan since the US invasion of 2003 as Sunni and Shi’ites continue to slaughter each other across the country.
The holy month will end this week -- the precise date being one of many things that divides the Sunnis and majority Shi'ites – but the violence was ferocious even by Iraq's savage standards.
Trainees ambushed
Two busloads of police recruits were ambushed on their way back from a training centre north of Baghdad, killing 15 and injuring 24 others.
Police say gunmen planted a bomb in their path then poured automatic fire into their unarmoured vehicles.
An interior ministry official said some trainees remained missing and many of the victims' bodies had been booby-trapped by the attackers, suspected to be Sunni insurgents opposed to the US-backed government.
Hundreds of Iraqis have been murdered in both sectarian violence and clashes between armed militia factions, while US military casualties for October have already hit the highest monthly death toll of the year 2006.
Deadly bombings
In renewed violence today, several bombs exploded in Baghdad, killing at least five people and wounding about 50, including children, medics said.
One blast hit a bakery in the mainly Shi'ite suburb of Baghdad
Jadida, injuring 20 people who had come to buy sweets and pastries, the latest in a series of attacks targeting families preparing for the upcoming feast of Eid at the end of Ramadan.
Later, three women and two men were killed and 20 people wounded when a suicide attacker wearing a bomb belt blew himself up in front of clothes stalls in east Baghdad, according to doctors and police.
And another bomb exploded inside a collective taxi as it passed through the crowded Shorjah market, police said at the scene.
Meanwhile, US-led coalition forces unleashed an air strike south of the capital, killing five insurgents with a "precision strike" as they planted a booby-trap on a road near the town of Arab Jabur, the military said.
US officials hope the end of Ramadan will see the bloodletting ease up, but the chaos has already changed the terms of the debate in Washington, where talk is turning to the search for an exit strategy.
Strategy review
President George W Bush met senior commanders and diplomats yesterday, amid reports the United States is losing confidence in Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's ability or willingness to stem the violence.
According to a report in the New York Times, the officials could decide to impose a timetable on Maliki to address sectarian violence and get a handle on the security situation, or face political "penalties".
In the streets of Baghdad and the killing fields around it, rival Shi'ite and Sunni death squads and militias are engaged in a tit-for-tat battle to cleanse areas of civilian followers of the rival sect.
Meanwhile, in the largely Shi'ite cities of the south, rival militia groups clash with each other and with Iraqi state security forces that are themselves often infiltrated and controlled by the warring factions.
Authorities imposed a curfew in the town of Suweira today after fighting erupted between the Mahdi Army -- a loosely-organised militia nominally loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr -- and police.