Four bomb blasts killed dozens of people across the capital [Reuters]

About one dozen people died and 35 were hurt after a bomb on board a minibus blew up outside a mosque in the city's Shurta area on Sunday.

A second blast killed one person and wounded another in Hai al-Amil.

Both the attacks took place minutes before the end of the day's Ramadan fasting period.

A third attack involving a car bomb and a roadside bomb in the central Karrada district killed 19 people and wounded 72, officials said, adding the dead included three policemen and three women.

In Karrada, the streets were jammed with shoppers buying clothes and gifts ahead of a six-day public holiday beginning on Tuesday to celebrate the end of the fasting month.

Earlier, one person was also killed and three wounded by a roadside bomb in the district of Mansur, security officials said.

"The insurgents ... [want] to show there is no security in Baghdad," Qassim Moussawi, the Iraqi government's Baghdad security spokesman, told the Reuters news agency.

He said that authorities expected there to be more attacks in the capital, and some would be difficult to prevent, as bombs were being assembled inside the neighbourhoods they were targeting, instead of passing through police checkpoints.

A Kurdish mayor of a northern Iraqi town was wounded in a separate roadside bombing in Saadiyah near the Kurdish-dominated city of Khanaqin, along with six of his guards, police said.

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