A wave of bombings has ripped through the Iraqi capital, killing at least 56 people on the 10th anniversary of the US-led invasion.
About a dozen blasts, mainly car bombs, exploded in a busy Baghdad market, near the heavily fortified Green Zone and in other districts across the capital.
The Green Zone houses major government offices and the embassies of several countries, including the United States and Britain.
A suicide bomber also attacked a police base in a Shiite town south of the capital, officials said.
"I was driving my taxi and suddenly I felt my car rocked. Smoke was all around. I saw two bodies on the ground," said Ali Radi, a taxi driver caught in one of the blasts in Baghdad's Sadr City, a poor Shiite neighbourhood.
"People were running and shouting everywhere."
Along with the 56 killed in the mainly Shiite areas, more than 200 people were wounded, officials said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the Baghdad blasts, but Islamic State of Iraq, a wing of al Qaeda, has vowed to regain ground lost in its war with US troops.
A minibus was bombed in Sadr City This year the group has carried out a string of high-profile attacks intended to undermine public confidence in the Shiite-led government.
Tuesday's violence started at around 8am local time when a bomb exploded outside a popular restaurant in Baghdad's Mashtal neighbourhood, killing four people and wounding 15.
It blew out the restaurant's windows and left several cars in the street destroyed.
Minutes later, two labourers were killed and eight wounded when a roadside bomb hit the place where they meet daily in an area of New Baghdad.
A decade after Western troops swept Saddam Hussein from power, Iraq still struggles with insurgents, sectarian friction and political feuds among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions.
The latest bombings came 10 years to the day that Washington announced the start of the invasion on March 19, 2003 - though by that time it was already the following morning in Iraq.
Attacks have dropped since the peak of the insurgency in 2006 and 2007, but tensions simmer and militants remain a potent threat to Iraq's security forces.
A popular market in Baghdad was targetted In a sign of concern over security, Iraq's cabinet have postponed local elections in two provinces, Anbar and Nineveh, for up to six months because of threats to electoral workers and violence.
Syria's war next door is also whipping up Iraq's volatile mix. Iraq is exposed to a regional tussle for influence between Turkey, which backs Sunni rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad, and Shiite Iran, the Syrian leader's main ally.
The political crisis in Iraq has worsened since American troops left Iraq in December 2011, removing the symbolic buffer of the US military power and weakening Washington's influence.
Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix maintains that the invasion was a terrible mistake.
He told Sky News that Iraq was "not a danger to anyone at that time" and it was therefore "a violation of the UN charter which allows states to use arms in self-defence against an armed attack".
He said former US president George Bush and Britain's ex-prime minister Tony Blair "demonstrated poor judgement" in going to war.
But he said their decision had not been taken in bad faith.
"If they had exercised the slightest critical thinking I think they would have abstained, they would have delayed and then seen the results of more inspections," he said.
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