Car bombs ripped through Shiite pilgrims near Baghdad while militants attacked a city council headquarters and a police station, in Iraq-wide violence that has killed at least 66 people.
The killing of the pilgrims on Monday underscored the danger of sectarian violence in Iraq, while the attacks on the city council and police station in Salaheddin province showed the impunity with which militants can strike even targets that should be highly secure.
Violence in Iraq has reached a level not seen since 2008, when the country was emerging from a period of brutal sectarian killings, and has raised fears it is slipping back into all-out conflict.
In the Rashid area south of Baghdad, two car bombs targeted Shiite pilgrims, killing at least 22 people and wounding at least 52, security and medical officials said.
The second-deadliest attack on Monday was in the northern city of Mosul, where militants gunned down 12 people on a bus.
The city has become one of the most dangerous parts of Iraq, with militants carrying out frequent attacks and reportedly extorting money from shopkeepers.
Also on Monday, five other car bombs and a magnetic "sticky bomb" on a vehicle exploded in and around the Iraqi capital, killing at least 17 people and wounding at least 43 - the second series of blasts in the area in 24 hours.
One of the car bombs went off in a car park near the Baghdad provincial council headquarters, killing at least four people.
The attacks came after another series of bombings in and around Baghdad killed at least nine people on Sunday night, while violence elsewhere in the country that day killed a further 11 people, among them a TV presenter and a family of five.
More people died in violence in the first eight days of this month than in the whole of last December, and more than 6500 people have been killed since the beginning of 2013, according to AFP figures.
