(CNN) -- More than 100 people were killed in Baghdad on Tuesday in bombing and shooting incidents, most of them in neighborhoods where the militia of a powerful anti-American Shiite cleric holds sway.
A suicide bomber and a car bomb killed at least 70 people and wounded 169 more at entrances to a once-prestigious university in Baghdad, reports Trend.
The strike at Mustansiriya University was a dual bomb attack. The suicide bomber detonated a vest at the back entrance of the school, and a parked car exploded at the main gate under a pedestrian bridge where students and employees get public transit.
A CNN producer near the scene said police sealed off the area and there were armed members of the Mehdi Army -- the militia under the control of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr -- on the street.
The university, in northeastern Baghdad, is at the tip of Sadr City, a Shiite neighborhood where there is much support for al-Sadr. It is considered to be a Mehdi militia stronghold.
Meanwhile, gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on a marketplace in the Mehdi Army-controlled Bunouk area of eastern Baghdad and killed 12 civilians. Seven others were wounded.
In the Sadr City neighborhood, a bomb left inside a minivan detonated, killing four people and wounding 10 others, the official said. The blast occurred 100 to 200 meters away from al-Sadr's main office.
There were two deadly incidents in central Baghdad.
A bomb exploded near a police convoy along a main road in central Baghdad, the official said. When police and others responded to that blast, a second bomb exploded nearby. At least 15 people were killed and 70 wounded by the two bombs, the official said. About two hours before that incident, two police officers who helped defuse a car bomb in central Baghdad's Karrada section were killed when another bomb hidden nearby exploded, the official said. Two civilians were also killed in the blast, and 10 people, including three policemen, were wounded, the official said.
In Baghdad's western Bayaa neighborhood, two policemen were gunned down as they drove home after work in civilian clothing and car.
Mortar rounds hit a residential area in the Amil neighborhood in western Baghdad, wounding 10 civilians.
Police on Tuesday found 25 unidentified bodies across Baghdad.
The peak in violence came on the same day as the release of a United Nations report that said more than 34,000 civilians were "violently killed" across Iraq last year.