Two bombs exploded back to back near a Shiite shrine in central Baghdad where worshippers had gathered in prayer Saturday, killing four people and injuring 24, police and hospital officials said, Associated Press reported.
The first bomb went off next to the tomb of a revered ninth century religious figure, Sheik Othman al-Omari. Then a car bomb exploded in a nearby parking lot as crowds were gathering. The blasts damaged the shrine and blew out the windows of neighboring buildings.
Attacks blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni extremists are again targeting Shiite civilians. Violence between Shiites and Sunnis drove the country to the brink of civil war in 2006 and 2007, though it has ebbed since.
Iraqi and U.S. officials say the attacks are aimed at rekindling that violence, but so far Shiite groups have reacted with restraint.
The police and hospital officials who gave details of the shrine attack and the casualty toll spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not permitted to speak to journalists.
In what appeared to be another attempted sectarian attack, a bomb was found hidden inside a Quran at the Shiite Kazimiyah shrine in northern Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said.
The book contained half a kilogram, or about a pound, of explosives to be triggered with a cell phone and was brought in by a woman, said Maj. Gen. Jihad al-Jabiri, speaking on state television. He said the bomb failed to detonate.
Shrine guards became suspicious after the person had left and they called police, who discovered the bomb and defused it.
Northeast of the capital, a roadside bomb killed four people in Diyala province, a provincial police officer said.
The victims included a local member of a Sunni militia known as the Awakening Councils and three of his relatives, the officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk with the press. The militias, which have many former insurgents, allied with American forces in 2006 to fight al-Qaida in Iraq.
In other attacks Saturday, a bomb attached to a civilian car exploded in the northwest of the capital, killing the driver and wounding two passengers, police said. The motive for the attack was not known.
In the northern city of Mosul on Saturday, a roadside bomb went off near an Iraqi army patrol, prompting soldiers to open fire to scare off any attackers. A stray bullet from the shooting killed a traffic policeman, police said.
The government's failures to restore security to the capital and northern Iraq are weighing on Iraqis' minds in the months before January parliamentary elections.
On Saturday, Iraq's Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, who stepped down earlier this year as leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party, told reporters he was forming a new party to run in January's national elections.
He said his Renewal party will include academics, intellectuals and tribal leaders and will be above sectarian and ethnic divisions.
The Iraqi Islamic Party, the country's largest Sunni party, is a junior partner in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite-led government. It suffered heavy losses in the Sunni Anbar province in provincial elections in January. Anbar had traditionally been the Islamic Party's power base.
The move by al-Hashemi signals further fragmentation of the Sunni Arab political establishment and is likely to cost the minority - once dominant under Saddam Hussein - votes in mixed provinces like Diyala, Mosul and the capital, Baghdad, where Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds have large communities.
Al-Hashemi has been a harsh critic of al-Maliki and is likely to join a mainly Shiite-alliance and major Kurdish parties in a bid to form the government after January's vote. Al-Maliki and his Dawa party are not in the Shiite alliance.