Rebels bent on toppling Iraq's new US-backed government detonated bombs at a Baghdad restaurant and a Shi'ite mosque today, part of a series of attacks that killed at least 26 and wounded 130.
In the deadliest attack, a car bomb exploded at lunch time outside a northern Baghdad restaurant, killing eight people and wounding around 90, police and hospital officials said.
Later, a suicide car bomber targeted a Shi'ite mosque in Mahmoudiya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, killing seven people and wounding 23, many of them children, doctors said. Five of those killed were from the same family, they said.
"The kids were playing outside the mosque when a car came up quickly and then exploded," said witness Mohammed Awad. "So many women and children were injured."
The attack in mixed Sunni and Shi'ite Mahmoudiya comes amid a surge in sectarian violence over the past three weeks, since the formation of a Shi'ite-led government, Iraq's first.
The rise in sectarianism, which has seen hundreds of tit-for-tat killings, has raised fears that Iraq could slide towards civil war.
Rebels led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which has claimed responsibility for many of the deadliest attacks in the country, earlier said it was behind the assassination of a government official and his driver as they were heading for work in Baghdad.
The morning assassination of Wael Rubaie, an official in the operations room of the Ministry of State for National Security, was the latest in a long line of targeted killings and it came on another bloody day for the country.
In Tuz Khurmatu, south of the oil city of Kirkuk, a suicide truck bomb exploded outside the mayor's office, killing five and wounding 18, local police said.
Rebels also struck in Samarra, targeting a US base with two suicide car bombs and a suicide bomber strapped with explosives. Four Iraqis were killed and four US soldiers were among the wounded.