Gunmen and suicide car bombers have killed at least 74 people including Iranians near the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah, in an attack claimed by Islamic State group.
The attackers struck at midday, opening fire on a restaurant before getting into a car and blowing themselves up at a nearby security checkpoint, officials said.
Security sources said the attackers were disguised as members of the Hashed al-Shaabi, a mainly Shia paramilitary alliance which has fought alongside the army and police against the so-called Islamic State militant group in northern Iraq.
The toll from the attacks was 74 dead, including seven Iranians, and 93 wounded, said the deputy health chief for the mainly Shia province of Dhiqar, of which Nasiriyah is the capital.
He told AFP that many of the wounded were in serious condition.
The area targeted is used by Shia pilgrims and visitors from neighbouring Iran headed for the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala further north, although Dhiqar has previously been spared the worst of Iraq's violence.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement carried by its Amaq propaganda arm.
The toll makes it the deadliest IS attack in Iraq since pro-government forces drove the jihadists out of second city Mosul in July.
The Sunni extremist group regularly stages attacks in Iraq, where it has also lost swathes of territory to US-backed pro-government forces.
Thursday's attacks come as Iraqi forces backed by tribal fighters close in one of the last IS bastions in the country: the Al-Qaim area on the border with war-ravaged Syria.
The group's only other stronghold is Hawija, in Kirkuk province some 300km north of Baghdad.
IS has suffered a string of defeats on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, leaving in tatters the cross-border "caliphate" it declared in 2014.
But any military offensive in Hawija is expected to be postponed due to a planned referendum on Kurdish independence.
