At least 21 killed as intensity of violence across Iraq increases in the first week of Ramadan
Bombs exploded outside two Sunni mosques in Baghdad late on Saturday, killing at least 21 people leaving prayers and extending a wave of daily violence rippling across Iraq since the start of Ramadan, authorities said.
A separate attack at a funeral north-east of the capital killed at least three others.
Police said the first Baghdad blast went off about 10pm local time near the gate of the Khalid bin al-Walid mosque in the capital's southern Dora neighbourhood, a largely Sunni Muslim area. It struck just after the end of special late-evening prayers held during Ramadan.
At least 16 people were killed and 31 were wounded, police said. A hospital official confirmed the casualty toll.
Soon after, a car bomb exploded at another Sunni worship centre, the Mullah Huwaish mosque, in the Hay al-Jami'a area in western Baghdad. That blast killed five and wounded 19, police and health officials said.
Iraq is weathering its worst eruption of violence in half a decade, with more than 2,600 people killed since the start of April.
The pace of the bloodshed has picked up since Ramadan began on Wednesday, including a suicide bombing at a coffee shop in the northern city of Kirkuk late on Friday that killed dozens.
There has been no claim of responsibility for the recent wave of attacks.
Once-rare attacks on Sunni places of worship have risen in recent months as sectarian tensions grow, raising the prospect that Shia militias are growing more active.
In another attack on Saturday, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a funeral in the town of al-Abbara, near the city of Baqouba, about 35 miles north-east of Baghdad. Police and hospital officials said that attack killed three and wounded 10.
All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorised to release the information to journalists.
Earlier in the day, authorities in Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, ordered all cafes in the city to be temporarily shut down a day after a suicide attack there killed at least 39 people.
Kirkuk police chief Major-General Jamal Tahir said his officers could not guarantee the security of patrons at the dozens of teahouses and coffee shops scattered across the city. It is unclear when the shops will be allowed to reopen.
Kirkuk is a flashpoint for ethnic tensions, with its mix of Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen holding competing claims to control of the oil-rich area.