A car bomb outside a Shia mosque in central Iraq killed at least 23 people and wounded 46 today, as insurgents targeted Iraqi civilians on one of the last days of the holy month of Ramadan.
Earlier several roadside bombs and shootings killed at least a dozen people, mostly in Baghdad, and a US helicopter crashed in Ramadi in the west of the country where US forces are battling a Sunni Arab insurgency that shows no signs of abating.
The car bomb in the mainly Shia town of Musayyib, south of Baghdad, came as people were preparing for the three-day Eid holiday marking the end of Ramadan. Eid is expected to start on Thursday or Friday.
The Interior Ministry said 23 people had been killed in the attack, which used a remotely detonated car bomb.
Musayyib has been hit by several attacks, including one in July when a suicide bomber blew up a fuel truck, killing 98 people and wounding 75.
The town sits near a fault line between the Shia and the Sunni communities in an area where Saddam Hussein resettled many of his supporters on rich farmland south of the capital.
Iraq's Shia and Kurdish-led government and its US backers are battling a Sunni Arab insurgency that has killed thousands of people since the March 2003 US-led invasion.
US commanders have warned of a rise in bloodshed in the run-up to the December 15th election that Washington hopes will set Iraq on the path to stability.
In a statement issued on the eve of the main annual Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, Defence Minister Saadoun Dulaimi, one of the few Sunnis in the government, invited former officers with the ranks of major, captain and lieutenant to return to the army.
With the election looming, there may be a political as well as practical security motive behind the move. The loss of army pay has been a major source of discontent among Saddam's fellow minority Sunni Arabs, who dominated the officer corps.
Within weeks of Saddam's fall in April 2003, US administrator Paul Bremer disbanded at a stroke Iraq's 400,000- strong armed forces and security agencies. US officials said it simply formalised the fact that the army had evaporated in the aftermath of the war, with soldiers deserting en masse.
Washington is racing to build up a new Iraqi army to let it bring home American troops who are pinned down in Iraq by insurgents displaying considerable military experience.
The plight of the hundreds of thousands of unemployed former soldiers has been a rallying point for Sunni Arab complaints that the ruling Shi'ites and Kurds are neglecting their interests.
After most Sunnis boycotted an election in January, they seem likely to turn out in force at the December 15th ballot; US and Iraqi officials hope this engagement in the political process can undermine popular support for the insurgency.