Two bombs near a Sunni mosque and another against a Sunni funeral procession killed 49 people in Iraq today, officials said, after two days of attacks against Shiites that killed dozens.
The burst of violence raises the spectre of tit-for-tat killings common during the height of sectarian bloodletting in Iraq that killed tens of thousands of people, and comes at a time of simmering tension between Iraq's Sunni minority and Shiite majority.
One bomb exploded as worshippers were departing the Saria mosque in the city of Baquba, north of Baghdad, while a second detonated after people gathered at the scene of the first blast, killing a total of 41 people and wounding 57, police and a doctor said.
And in Madain, south of Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded near a funeral procession for a Sunni man, killing eight people and wounding at least 25, security and medical officials said.
The bombings are the latest in a series of attacks that have targeted both Sunni and Shiite places of worship in the past few weeks and come after two days of assaults against Shiite targets.
Yesterday, a suicide bomber killed 12 people at the entrance of Al-Zahraa Husseiniyah, a Shiite place of worship in the city of Kirkuk, where relatives of victims from violence the day before were receiving condolences.
Car bombs hit three Shiite-majority areas of Baghdad yesterday, killing 10 people, while 21 people died in a series of bombings that mainly hit Shiite areas of the capital the day before.
Gunmen also shot dead the brother of a Sunni MP in Baghdad yesterday.
Violence has fallen from those peaks but attacks are still common, killing more than 200 people in each of the first four months of this year, including more than 460 in April, according to AFP figures.
