A suicide bomber killed up to 20 people and wounded at least 21 at a police recruitment centre in Baghdad today, while across town an angry crowd of Shi'ites buried a senior cleric gunned down by insurgents.
Another suicide bomber blew up a car bomb at a police checkpoint just south of the city, killing five and wounding 12.
Women run towards Yarmouk Hospital after learning their sons were killed in a suicide attack.
The bombings were the worst in Iraq in at least six days, shattering a relative lull in the Sunni Arab insurgency against US forces and the Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led government.
US President George W. Bush, whose approval ratings have slid in recent weeks to the lowest levels of his presidency over concern about the war, said in a radio address the best way to honour the nation's dead was to “stay in the fight.“
A senior Interior Ministry source said 20 people had been killed in the Baghdad blast and that the death toll could rise.
Twelve bodies lay under sheets surrounded by wailing relatives in a courtyard at the nearby Yarmuk hospital.
Doctors there said they were also treating 21 wounded, many in serious condition. Others may have been treated elsewhere and some bodies may have been collected by families at the scene.
The Interior Ministry source said the bomber wore an explosive vest beneath civilian clothes when he approached the ministry's special forces recruitment centre in the Mansour district of western Baghdad. The recruitment centre has been targeted by bombers several times in the past.
A senior police officer in Mahmudiya, just south of the capital, said police and civilians were among the five dead and 12 wounded when a suicide car bomber crashed into a police checkpoint in the centre of town.
Suicide bombings and car bombs have become the deadliest tactic in violence which has worsened sharply since the elected government took office in April. Police recruits are frequent targets, yet many Iraqi men continue to sign up in the hope of a paying job in a country where work is scarce.