Suicide car bombers struck Iraq's two main Shi'ite holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala today, killing at least 62 people and wounding nearly 130, six weeks before a historic election.
Earlier in Baghdad, dozens of gunmen carried out a brazen ambush on car, killing three employees of the organisation running next month's elections.
The bombings came just over an hour apart - first a suicide blast that ripped through minibuses at the entrance of the main bus station in the city of Karbala, then a car bomb in a central square of Najaf crowded with people watching a funeral procession attended by the city police chief and provincial governor.
The violence was the latest in an insurgent campaign to disrupt the crucial January 30th elections, the first national polls since the fall of Saddam Hussein - and they were the latest attacks to target Shiite Muslims, the majority community in Iraq and the most likely to dominate the vote.
The car bomb in Najaf detonated in central Maidan Square where a large crowd of people had gathered for the funeral procession of a tribal sheikh - about 100 yards from where Governor Adnan al-Zurufi and police chief Ghalib al-Jazaari were standing.
Mr Youssef Munim, head of the statistics department at Najaf's al-Hakim Hospital, said 47 people were killed by the explosion and 69 were wounded.
Residents were pulling bodies of the dead from damaged shops at the square, which is about 400 yards from the Imam Ali Shrine, the holiest Shiite site in Iraq.
The bombing in Kerbala, about 45 miles northwest of Najaf, destroyed about 10 passenger minibuses and set fire to five cars outside the crowded bus station. Firefighters tried to put out the blazes as ambulances ferried burned and bleeding casualties to the nearby al-Hussein hospital.
A hospital spokesman said 13 people were killed in the attack and 30 injured. It was the second bombing in Karbala in a week.
On Wednesday, a bomb went off at the city's gold-domed Imam Hussein Shrine, killing eight people and wounding 40 in an apparent attempt to kill a top aide to Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The shrine, located near the bus station, was hit by a March suicide bombing that killed 85 people and wounded 100.
The holy sites in Najaf and Kerbala, south of Baghdad, house the tombs of Shia Islam's most revered saints. Insurgents also carried out a new attack on election officials, with a daylight assault on Baghdad's central Haifa Street, the scene of repeated clashes between security forces and insurgents.
About 30 militants hurling hand grenades and firing machine guns attacked a car carrying five people employed by the commission's Baghdad office. Three employees, including a security guard, were killed, while two escaped unhurt. A police official said four people were killed, adding that the ferocity of the clashes prevented police from nearing the area.
Today's attacks were the latest in a series aimed at disrupting efforts to prepare for the election, six weeks away.
Yesterday, mortars landed on an election office in Dujail, north of Baghdad, killing two people. A mortar also hit an election office in Kirkuk, an oil rich and ethnically divided city where tensions are running high ahead of the poll. National Guards were able to repel gunmen who attacked a third election office southwest of Kirkuk.
Last month in the northern city of Mosul, attackers set fire to and destroyed a warehouse where election materials were stored.