Bomb attacks targeting Shia Muslim areas of Iraq killed at least 73 people today, police and hospital sources said, ramping up fears of an increase in sectarian violence.
Shia prime minister Nuri al-Maliki sparked the worst political crisis in a year on December 19th when he sought the removal of two senior Sunni politicians, a day after the last US troops left Iraq.
On December 22nd, bombs in predominately Shia parts of Iraq's capital killed 72.
The biggest attack today was by a police checkpoint west of Nassiriya in the south, where a suicide bomber targeting Shia pilgrims killed at least 38 people and wounded 70, Qusay al-Abadi, head of Nassiriya provincial council said.
Photographs from the scene showed relatives hugging the bodies of young men lying face down on ground covered in blood and with the pilgrims' belongings strewn around them.
Hundreds of thousands of Shia pilgrims are expected to make their way to the holy southern Iraqi Shi'ite city of Kerbala before Arbain, a major Shia Muslim religious rite due to be marked in a week's time.
Earlier, a bomb planted on a parked motorcycle and another roadside explosive device killed at least 10 people and wounded 37 others in Baghdad's northeastern impoverished Sadr City slum, police and hospital sources said.
Police said they found and defused two other bombs.
"There was a group of day labourers gathered, waiting to be hired for work. Someone brought his small motorcycle and parked it nearby. A few minutes later it blew up, killed some people, wounded others and burned some cars," said a police officer at the scene, declining to be named.
Video from Sadr City hospital showed a crowded emergency room with many injured people and their relatives. One man sat on the floor, hugging his younger brother, as they cried for their sister who was killed in one of the blasts.
Another set of explosions, two car bombs, occurred in Baghdad's northwestern Kadhimiya district and killed at least 15 people and wounded 32, police and hospital sources said.
"People started to flee from the explosions and others ran towards them (to look for relatives). The scene was like a play, with people crying and screaming and falling," said Ahmed Maati, a policeman in Kadhimiya.
Iraq is still plagued by a deadly Sunni Muslim insurgency and Shia militias nearly nine years after the US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.
Sadr City is a stronghold of radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia once fought US and Iraqi troops. He is now a key ally of Mr Maliki.
Mr Maliki's government, dominated by Iraq's majority Shias, issued an arrest warrant for the country's top Sunni politician last month. The Sunni official, vice president Tariq al-Hashemi, is currently in Iraq's Kurdish north - effectively out of reach of state security forces.
Mr Al-Maliki's main political rival, the Sunni-backed Iraqiya, is boycotting parliament sessions and cabinet meetings to protest what they say are efforts by the government to consolidate power and marginalise them.
Agencies