Baghdad - At least 42 people were killed and 88 injured in a series of bombings that targeted high density districts across Iraq on Thursday. Police sources said that at least 35 people were killed and 63 injured - most of them women and children - in two consecutive suicide bombings in the city of Mosul, some 400 kilometres north of Baghdad.
The bombers detonated their explosives in a crowded street in Tel Afar district, where many Shiite Turkmen congregate, sources told the German Press Agency dpa.
In central Baghdad, meanwhile, seven people were killed and more than 25 injured when two consecutive bombs exploded in a market in the Shiite district of al-Sadr.
Several shops were severely damaged, sources in the Ministry of Interior said. Police and army forces cordoned off the scene.
Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, has been the scene of near-daily bomb attacks since the US troops withdrew from Iraqi cities and towns on June 30 and despite a government crackdown on suspected militants.
On Tuesday, two car bomb attacks left 27 people dead and 67 injured in two of the city's Shiite districts. In a separate attack in the city centre, seven people, including two policemen, were injured when a militant threw a bomb at a police patrol.
