CO-ORDINATED car bombs in four Iraqi cities during Shi'ite processions have killed at least 56 people and wounded dozens more.
The death toll was expected to rise in the attacks today, which included car bombs that tore into Shi'ite religious processions at four different locations.
The attacks targeted an annual pilgrimage commemorating the 8th-century death of a revered imam.
Two police officers said the first bomb struck pilgrims in a procession around dawn in the northern Baghdad neighbourhood of Taji, killing seven and wounding 22 people.
Within hours, three more explosions hit other processions in different parts of the Iraqi capital, killing at least 19 more people and wounding more than 50, police officers said.
In the city of Hillah, 95 kilometres south of Baghdad, two car bombs exploded minutes apart at dawn in the centre of town, killing 21 people and wounding 53, according to two police officers and one health worker.
In the southern city of Karbala, a parked car exploded about near another group of Shi'ite pilgrims, killing two people and injuring 22 others, a police official and health official said.Balad is 80km north of the capital, near the city of Tikrit.
The bombs went off as the pilgrims started to make their way to Baghdad for the commemorations marking the death of al-Kadhim, one of the 12 principal Shi'ite saints, who is said to be buried in a shrine there.
The attacks were launched against the backdrop of a prolonged sectarian-based political crisis that some fear is opening the door to renewed violence.
Last year's pilgrimage to the al-Kadhim shrine passed without incident, and Iraqi security officials at the time hailed their troops' work as a huge success.
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