A spate of bombings in Baghdad on Thursday killed at least 16 people and wounded dozens more, shattering a relative calm with the capital's deadliest violence in weeks.
Roadside bombs and explosives-packed cars detonated across a half-dozen neighbourhoods in the north, south and west of Baghdad, underlining persistent security concerns even as international energy companies met in the centre of the capital to bid on nationwide oil and gas exploration blocks.
Overall, 16 people were killed and at least 56 others wounded in the attacks, according to an interior ministry official and two medical sources.
Thursday's deadliest attack took place in the north Baghdad neighbourhood of Shuala, where a car bomb killed at least 13 people and wounded 32 others, medical officials said.
A police first lieutenant in Shuala said the car was driven by a suicide attacker.
The explosion badly damaged nearby shops, and windows in several adjacent buildings were shattered, an AFP journalist at the scene said. Dozens of people in the area were crying and emergency responders were still at the scene more than an hour after the attack.
One yellow taxi was being taken away for examination by police, with the driver's side seat and door covered in blood. An unmarked civilian pick-up truck left the neighbourhood with a coffin loaded into its back.
Security forces, who cordoned off the scene of the attack, barred journalists from examining the area or speaking to shop owners or civilians.
Separate bombings also struck Al-Amriyah, Ghazaliyah and Yarmuk in west Baghdad, and Dora and Saidiyah in the south of the capital, all Thursday morning.
A series of roadside bombs in Al-Amriyah killed two people and wounded at least seven, officials said, while a car bomb near the home of an official in Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's office killed one passerby.
The latter attack in Yarmuk left the official unharmed.
Thursday's violence was the worst to hit Baghdad since April 19, when attacks in and around the capital killed 17 and wounded 106, unrest claimed by Al-Qaeda's front group in Iraq.
And in north Iraq on Thursday, a policeman was killed in a firefight with smugglers near the Iraq-Syria border, the interior ministry said in a statement on its website.
The bombings came on the same day foreign firms congregated in central Baghdad for an auction of energy exploration blocks, a sale that had been hoped to boost Iraq's role as a key global supplier of oil and gas, but which ended with just three of 12 blocks awarded.
Violence in Iraq has declined dramatically since its peak in 2006 and 2007, but attacks remain common, especially in Baghdad. A total of 126 Iraqis were killed in violence in April, according to official figures. - AFP