A series of bombings have killed at least 63 people in Baghdad, the first attacks since Iraq's Shia-led government was engulfed in a sectarian crisis.
The bombings, just days after the last US troops left Iraq, marked a violent backlash against Shia Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's move to sideline two Sunni rivals.
The tension threatens a relapse into the kind of sectarian violence that drove Iraq to the brink of civil war a few years ago.
In Baghdad's mostly Shia Karrada district, at least 18 people were killed when a suicide bomber driving an ambulance detonated the vehicle near a government office.
Police and security sources said there were more than ten explosions across Baghdad in the hours that followed, mostly targeting Shia districts. A total of 194 people were wounded.
Iraqi officials linked the attacks to the current crisis.
"The timing of these crimes and the places where they were carried out confirm ... the political nature of the targets," Mr Maliki said in a statement.
In the other Baghdad attacks, two roadside bombs struck the southwestern Amil district, killing at least seven people and wounding 21 others.
A car bomb blew up in a Shia neighbourhood in Doura in the south, killing three people and wounding six, police said.
More bombs went off in the central Alawi area, Shaab and Shula in the north, all mainly Shia areas, and a roadside bomb killed one and wounded five near the Sunni neighbourhood of Adhamiya.
