A bombing at a market north of Baghdad was the deadliest in violence that killed 41 people today, as the year's death toll topped 5,800 amid a surge in unrest.
The flare-up has prompted Baghdad to appeal for international help in fighting the country's worst bloodshed since 2008, just months before its first general election in four years.
Officials have voiced concern over a resurgent Al-Qaeda emboldened by the civil war in neighbouring Syria which has provided the jihadist network's front groups with increased room to plan and carry out attacks in Iraq.
Today's violence came a day after a spate of attacks, most of them car bombs targeting Shiite neighbourhoods of Baghdad, killed 59 people and wounded more than 100 in Iraq's highest death toll of the month.
Shootings and bombings struck in and around Baghdad and in Diyala, a restive ethnically mixed province north of Baghdad that has seen some of Iraq's worst bloodshed in recent months.
In the deadliest attack, a car bomb went off at around noon (0900 GMT) in a fruit and vegetable market in the Diyala town of Saadiyah.
At least 32 people were killed and 40 wounded in the blast, officials said.
Saadiyah is populated mostly by Faylis, or Shiite Kurds, and lies in a tract of territory that Kurdish leaders want to incorporate in their autonomous region in the north over the objections of the central government.
Militants frequently exploit poor communication between Kurdish and central government security forces to carry out attacks.
