Bomb blasts in Baghdad killed at least 20 more people on Friday at the end of a week of bloodshed that prompted a United Nations envoy to warn Iraq was "at a crossroads". More than 160 people have been killed since Tuesday, when troops stormed a Sunni protest camp near Kirkuk, triggering clashes that quickly spread to other Sunni areas in western and northern provinces.
Although well below the heights of 2006-7, this week's violence was the most widespread since US troops pulled out of Iraq in December 2011. Militant attacks have increased this year as Iraq's fragile ethnic and sectarian balance comes under growing strain from the civil war in neighbouring Syria. In and around Baghdad, eight people including a soldier were killed in a series of bomb blasts outside mostly Sunni mosques.
Later on Friday, a car bomb killed seven in a busy shopping area in the south of the city. In the capital's Shia stronghold of Sadr City, a motorcycle bomb exploded near a kiosk selling falafel, killing five. Tens of thousands of Sunni Muslims poured onto the streets of Ramadi and Falluja in the western province of Anbar following Friday prayers, in their biggest show of strength since the outbreak of protests last year.
In Ramadi the preacher, who wore military fatigues with his cleric's turban, gave security forces 24 hours to quit the city, warning he would not be responsible for whatever happened after that. Sunnis have been protesting since December against what they see as the marginalisation of their sect since the US-led invasion overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003 and empowered majority Shias through the ballot box.