There is devastation in several parts of Baghdad after a series of bomb attacks that killed at least two dozen people on Monday night.
Nine people died in car bomb explosions that targeted mosques in the Iraqi capital’s predominantly Shi’ite districts of Amil and Karrada.
In the worst attack, a minibus blew up at a bus station in the Ur neighbourhood in northern Baghdad, leaving at least 11 people dead according to police.
The bus, parked inside the station, had already aroused suspicion when it exploded, setting several other vehicles on fire.
Elsewhere a car bomb near a busy street in the western district of Ghazaliya killed four others.
No group immediately claimed responsibility but Shi’ites are often targeted by Sunni Islamist insurgents who have been gaining ground in Iraq over the past year and overran several towns in recent weeks.
In separate incidents in the northern city of Tikrit, gunmen shot dead a police colonel and a barber inside his shop.
The army on Monday was fighting to wrest control of Sulaiman Pek from Sunni militants who took over parts of the northern town last Thursday and raised the black flag of the Islamic state in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) over it.
ISIL is active in the civil war in neighbouring Syria and is also present in the city of Falluja, which has been under siege by the army since January 1, when militants took over.
