( dpa ) - At least 25 people were killed and nine wounded, while 40 suspects were arrested in separate attacks across Iraq, Iraqi officials and media reports said on Saturday.
In the southern city of Basra, 20 elements of the Jund al-Samaa militant group were killed and 35 were detained in armed clashes with Iraqi security forces, the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) reported.
Jund al-Samaa is a religious armed group, established in 2007, that aims at taking power over the city of Najaf, 180 kilometres south of Iraq's capital.
Security forces destroyed the group's meeting point in al-Zahraa district in central Basra.
Intense clashes with the security forces broke out Friday during the religious celebrations of Ashura festival, in which Shiite Muslims walk in a pilgrimage to the shrine in Karbala held to be the tomb of Imam Hussein, grandson of the prophet Mohammed, who was killed in the Battle of Karbala in 680.
In other developments, two civilians were killed and seven were injured Saturday, when two suicide devices went off in Kirkuk, some 250 kilometres north of the Iraqi capital, security sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Joint US-Iraqi forces arrested two suspects during a military operation south-west of Kirkuk.
In northern Baquba, an explosive device was detonated, killing three civilians and wounding two others.
In the late hours of Friday, security forces arrested three militants in the northern Mosul, as they were trying to move a corpse of another militant to the south of the city.
Southern cities of al-Nasiriyah and Basra have witnessed intense clashes between militants and security forces, leading to killing and injuring dozens of Iraqis, including policemen.