Twelve car bombs, mainly targeting Shi'ite-majority areas in and around Baghdad, have killed at least 47 people, while at least three died in a blast against Sunni worshippers, officials said.
The bombings on Monday were the latest in a string of sectarian attacks in central Iraq that have raised the spectre of a return to the intense Sunni-Shi'ite violence that peaked in 2006-2007 and killed tens of thousands of people.
The car bombs struck nine different areas, six of them Shi'ite-majority, one confessionally mixed and two Sunni-majority, also wounding more than 140 people.
The deadliest attacks hit Kadhimiyah, a mainly Shi'ite area of north Baghdad, where two car bombs killed at least nine people and wounded another 19.
In Baghdad Jadida, a bomb exploded in a car park, burning vehicles, destroying a fence and shattering the windows of nearby shops and a women's clinic, an AFP journalist reported.
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Security forces deployed to the area, closing off streets and using sniffer dogs to search for more bombs.
Later on Monday, a bomb exploded as worshippers left Al-Mustafa Mosque in the Dura area of south Baghdad, killing at least three people and wounding at least 12.
Central Iraq has seen a series of sectarian attacks on mosques and funerals in recent days.
The UN refugee agency has said it is "increasingly concerned about the situation in Iraq, where recent waves of sectarian violence threaten to spark new internal displacement of Iraqis fleeing bombings and other attacks".
It said that about 5000 Iraqis had already been displaced in 2013, joining more than 1.13 million who fled or were forced out of their homes in past years.
