Suicide bombers struck two Shia mosques in Baghdad on today, killing 13 people and wounding 31, police said.
A suicide car bomber killed seven and wounded 23 at a Shia assembly hall in the Zafaraniya district, and a teenage boy blew himself up at a mosque in New Baghdad, killing six and wounding 26, said a Baghdad security spokesman.
Both districts are Shia areas in the east of the capital. The death tolls could rise, police said.
It was the second major spate of bombings in the capital in recent days apparently linked to the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking Ramadan's end, one of the main celebrations in the Islamic year when Muslims attend mosque services and family feasts.
In the Zafaraniya strike, the bomber drove a Mercedes into an Iraqi police vehicle guarding a well-protected area around the mosque and triggered the explosion, Moussawi said.
In New Baghdad, a poor Shia suburb of high-rise apartments, witnesses described the bomber as a boy of about 14 years old who stepped into a crowd and blew himself up, police said.
Government officials had warned that militants might strike during the holiday.
For most of Iraq's Shias, Thursday is the main celebration of the holiday, which Sunni Muslims began observing earlier in the week. The government has declared a public holiday over six days to cover all sects.
Violence overall in Iraq is at four-year lows, however, and militants no longer control large numbers of villages and city districts as they did until 2007. But militant cells are still active and able to carry out bomb attacks.
Reuters