A spate of car bombs in Shiite areas of Iraq have killed 33 people and wounded more than 100 others, AFP reported.
Iraqis inspect destroyed cars at the scene of an explosion at the bird market in Kadhimiyah. A spate of car bombs in Shiite areas of Iraq have killed 33 people and wounded more than 100 others.
The attacks mainly targeted marketplaces and took the death toll from a week of violence to more than 100.
Twin explosions at a bird market in the north Baghdad neighbourhood of Kadhimiyah killed at least 17 people and wounded 45 others, security and medical officials said.
The two car bombs were set off just after 9.00am (local time) in a car park adjacent to the market, which is typically packed on a Friday, the weekly holiday in Iraq.
Several nearby cars were completely destroyed, and while passers-by scanned the wreckage, security forces tried to bar journalists from interviewing people in the area or taking pictures or videos.
Militants have targeted Baghdad's crowded bird markets in the past.
In the predominantly Shiite Iraqi province of Babil on Friday, two car bombs in the town of Shomali, south of Baghdad, killed 14 people and wounded 49 others, security and medical officials said.
The first exploded on the town's outskirts, while the second was detonated in a market.
Women and children were among the casualties in both attacks, medics said.
Another car bomb killed two people near the Shiite shrine city of Karbala, and two policemen were wounded by gunmen in the main northern city of Mosul, officials said.
UN special envoy Martin Kobler has condemned the attacks, saying it is the "duty" of Iraq's leaders to "see what can be put in place to stop this heinous, horrible violence".
Sunni militants, including al Qaeda's front group in Iraq, often target Shiite neighbourhoods with deadly attacks in a bid to push the country back to the sectarian bloodshed that blighted it from 2005 to 2008.
A total of 102 people have been killed in violence nationwide in the past week, and January was Iraq's deadliest month since September according to an AFP tally.