Insurgents killed at least 23 people with a wave of vehicle bombs across Iraq's ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk yesterday, one day after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki urged Iraqis to embrace reconciliation.
At least 73 others were wounded in the coordinated blasts caused by a huge suicide truck bomb and four car bombs which rocked oil-rich Kirkuk, a flashpoint city north of Baghdad disputed by Sunni Arabs, ethnic Kurds and Turkmen.
In the deadliest explosion, a suicide attacker driving a truck rigged with explosives blew himself up outside a police centre and the offices of two top Kurdish parties, killing 17 people, mostly civilians, police said. The toll included 10 women and two children visiting relatives held by the police.
Within an hour, a car bomb targeting a US military patrol killed three civilians and wounded six other people. Minutes later, another suicide car bomber rammed into an Iraqi army checkpoint, wounding two soldiers. Two other car bombs struck the city.
The closed-off area where the truck bomb exploded also houses the headquarters of Iraq's President Jalal Talabani and Kurdish regional president Massoud Barzani.
Firefighters battled flames at collapsed buildings and charred corpses lay in streets littered with twisted car parts.
US officials fear bloodshed may worsen with the holy month of Ramadan next week and have said car bombs could be a preferred tactic by al Qaeda and other Sunni insurgent groups.
Kirkuk police chief Major General Sherko Shakir said the simultaneous explosions, among the worst violence in volatile Kirkuk in months, were intended to "destabilise the city".
Settling Kirkuk's status between ethnic groups is one of Iraq's most sensitive issues, and failure to contain violence there could spark all-out war across Iraq, already gripped by sectarian violence between Muslim Shi'ites and Sunnis.
In Baghdad, police found 24 more victims of sectarian death squads in the past 24 hours, all of them bound, bearing signs of torture and with a single gunshot to the head, bringing to more than 200 the number of bodies in five days.
A roadside bomb in a popular bird and animal market in Baghdad killed two people and wounded eight, police said.
Shifting the focus to Baghdad, key to securing the rest of Iraq, US commanders are diverting troops from the western Anbar province to bolster a month-long crackdown in the capital.