At least 18 people were killed around Iraq Thursday, including seven by a car bomb in Baghdad's most populous Shiite district of Sadr City, security officials said. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said the car bomb killed "seven people when an Opel car was detonated."
Medics and an interior ministry official said another 26 people were wounded. The official said the bomb went off in the district's Al-Rashaad market.
Sadr City has been repeatedly targeted by Sunni militants since sectarian tensions with the newly empowered Shiite majority erupted into an explosion of tit-for-tat violence following the bombing of a Shiite shrine in February.
Another six people were killed in a string of shootings in and around Baquba, north of the capital, police said. Three of the dead were brothers, who owned an agricultural equipment shop, while another was a salesman. The four were shot in the centre of Baquba market.
A fifth victim was gunned down by men after they stole his car outside Baquba, while a civilian from the village of Zhagania, north of the town, was shot dead in a coffee shop.
In the town of Muqdadiyah, north-east of Baquba, three people died and 20 were wounded, including two policemen, in a mortar and roadside bomb attack on a market, police said.
A security source said that an Iraqi soldier responsible for protecting oil facilities was shot dead in Balad, north-west of Baquba, while in the main northern city of Mosul a senior police officer was shot dead.
In the upscale Baghdad neighbourhood of Mansur, a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle as a police patrol passed, wounding three policemen and two civilians, the interior ministry official said.
Five bodies, two them headless, were also pulled out of the Tigris river near the town of Suwayrah, south-east of the capital, police said.
Two more bodies were recovered from the Mahrut river near Muqdadiyah, they added.
The prime minister also said that four "individuals who were heading terrorist cells were captured in a raid by Iraqi and US forces in the town of Latifiyah", south of Baghdad.