At least 88 people have been killed and 160 injured in two co-ordinated car bomb attacks in central Baghdad.
The bombs exploded in central Baghdad's Haraj second-hand market shortly after midday (9am Irish time).
The near-simultaneous blasts were followed by sporadic gunfire in the ethnically mixed district.
A short time later in Khalis, northeast of Baghdad, a mortar and bomb attack in a market killed 12 people.
Another 40 people were wounded when the explosions tore through a crowd of people as they shopped.
Earlier, the political movement of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said it would end its two-month-old boycott of the Iraqi parliament, smoothing over a rift with its Shia allies in the US-backed government.
The reconciliation came as US forces suffered their third deadliest day in Iraq since the invasion in 2003.
25 US soldiers were killed on Saturday in clashes with gunmen, a helicopter crash and other violence.
In an interview published today, US President George W Bush distanced himself from predictions that troops could begin leaving Iraq by late summer.
He said bluntly there would be no timetable: 'We don't set timetables in this administration because an enemy will adjust their tactics,' he told the USA Today newspaper.
The comment followed a prediction made last week by the US commander of coalition forces in Iraq, General George Casey, that reinforcements currently being sent to Iraq could begin to leave the country by August or September.
But Mr Bush stopped short of repeating the same assurance. He refused to rule out US forces remaining in Iraq even after 20 January 2009, when a new president will take over.
