A series of bombs exploded in Shia areas of Baghdad today, killing at least 56 people in an apparent backlash against a series of blows to the al-Qaeda-led insurgency.
Eight people were also killed by bombs in the Sunni west of the country, less than a week after Iraqi security forces backed by US troops killed three senior al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq.
Thirteen bombs exploded in different areas of the Iraqi capital around the time of Muslim prayers, mostly near Shia mosques and at a marketplace.
Three bombs targeted worshippers outside the main office of anti-American Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the crowded Sadr City slum. Some 39 people were killed another 56 were wounded.
In another of today's attacks, 11 people were killed by a car bomb and a suicide bomber near a Shia mosque in al-Ameen district in southeastern Baghdad. A car bomb killed five near a mosque in the northwestern neighbourhood of al-Hurriya, police said.
The attacks, one of Iraq's deadliest in recent weeks, signalled the possibility of a rise in violence after a March national election produced no clear winner and left a power vacuum for insurgents to exploit.
On Tuesday, Iraqi and US troops killed regional commander Abu Shuaib, who ran operations in the three troubled northern provinces of Nineveh, Salahuddin and Kirkuk.
Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki announced on Monday that Abu Ayub al-Masri, head of Sunni al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who led the Islamic State in Iraq, were killed in joint action on Sunday. Masri, an Egyptian, was appointed to lead the Iraq franchise by al-Qaeda’s founder Osama bin Laden following the death of its Palestinian chief Abu Mussab Zarqawi in 2006.
The strikes against al-Qaeda's leadership have been accompanied by a string of smaller battlefield victories in which more than 300 suspected al-Qaeda fighters have been arrested and 19 killed, according to US and Iraqi officials.
Hours before the attacks in Baghdad, seven members of one family were killed in a series of blasts in Khalidiya, a town in Iraq's turbulent western province of Anbar 83km west of Baghdad. One police officer died trying to defuse a bomb.
The mainly Sunni province of Anbar has been relatively quiet since tribal leaders in 2006 started turning on Sunni Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda who had once dominated it. But insurgents continue to operate in the vast desert province.