Three car bombs shook central Baghdad near the Iranian, Egyptian and German embassies, killing up to 41 people and wounding over 200, authorities said.
The explosions hit the Iraqi capital two days after gunmen killed 24 people in a village just to the south.
The bombings followed a series of other incidents. Two mortar rounds also landed in Baghdad's Green Zone, home to many government offices and the US embassy compound.
The Iranian embassy had been a target before. In December 2009, a car bomb exploded in a car park near the facility. Seven months earlier gunmen opened fire on a car carrying three Iranian embassy staff in Baghdad.
In April 2007, a car bomb killed one person in a parking lot across the road from the embassy. A day later two car bombs hit the same area, wounding four people.
Security forces had predicted the possibility of rising violence after a tight election race that exposed the depth of Iraq's sectarian divide.
On Friday gunmen invaded the Sunni village of Albusaifi south of Baghdad and killed 24 people, many of them execution-style with a gunshot to the head.
