Three car bombs blew up near a US military convoy in Baghdad on today, killing 41 people, 34 of them children who were apparently rushing to collect sweets from American troops.
In two other attacks, a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near a US checkpoint outside the capital, killing two policemen and a US soldier, and a car bomb killed four people in the restive northern Iraq town of Tal Afar.
The Baghdad bombs went off as crowds gathered to celebrate the opening of a new sewage plant. It was not clear if the event or the US convoy passing by was the target.
The first explosion was followed by two more that struck those who rushed to help the initial victims, residents said.
Ten US soldiers were wounded in the attack, two of them seriously, the military said. Iraq's Health Ministry confirmed 41 dead and 139 wounded, the vast majority children.
A statement this evening apparently from the Tawhid and Jihad group of al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said it was behind the suicide attacks. The same group is holding British hostage Mr Ken Bigley.
Instability is steadily mounting just weeks before the US presidential election in November and four months before Iraq is due to hold its own nationwide polls. Attacks on American troops have risen to around 80 a day from 40 a month ago.
Doctors at Yarmouk hospital struggled to treat the flood of victims, as pools of blood formed on the floor.
One boy lay swathed in bandages on a stretcher, his severed leg on a table beside him. Others were scarred by shrapnel, their clothes blown off by the force of the explosion.
In rebel-held Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, US forces destroyed a building they said was being used by fighters loyal al-Zarqawi.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, speaking in London, condemned the violence and pledged the election would go ahead on time.
"We will have those elections on time in Iraq next year ... We are certain that by January most of the Iraqi people will be able to vote," Mr Allawi told the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.
"The Iraqis have struggled for democracy and we are going to achieve democracy whatever the stakes," he said, adding that the polls would strike "a huge blow to terrorists."
Mr Allawi dismissed a report in the Financial Times newspaper which claimed three of Iraq's oil-rich southern provinces were considering breaking away to set up an autonomous region similar to that demanded by Iraqi Kurds in the north.
"Don't take this too seriously," he said.
"Iraq will remain united. There will be national unity prevailing. The elections will cement the relationship."