At least 28 people were killed and 35 wounded when a car bomb ripped through a busy market in the town of Al-Bathaa, 30 kilometres from the southern Iraqi city of Nassariya, a local official said.
At least 40 people were killed and more than 70 injured after a car bomb exploded in Shula, a Shiite district in northwest Baghdad. Elsewhere, in the city's Doura district, a suicide bomber killed at least 12 and wounded 25.
A car bomb killed at least 10 and wounded dozens at a wholesale produce market in Baghdad, security officials said. Witnesses said police had found another bomb outside the market gate and a disposal crew had been called in to defuse it.
At least 41 people were killed and more than 60 wounded in three near-simultaneous car bombings at market places in the Sadr City area of Baghdad, Iraqi officials said.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's office confirmed that Iraqi forces have detained Abu Omar al-Baghdadi (pictured), the suspected leader of an Iraq-based al Qaeda group. It is not the first time reports of al-Baghdadi's death or capture have surfaced.
At least 70 people were killed in two separate suicide bomb attacks in Iraq as a security spokesman told Agence France-Presse that the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Omar Al-Baghdadi, had been arrested in Baghdad.
