At least 57 people have been killed in car bomb attacks in Baghdad and the north and south of Iraq.
One attack took place near a crowded market in the town of Khalis, about 50 miles north-east of Baghdad, killing 35 people.
"The driver begged police to be allowed to park his vehicle in order to buy medication from a nearby pharmacy and five minutes later it (the bomb) went off and caused huge destruction," police captain Mohammed al-Tamimi said.
In the town of Al Zubair, about nine miles south-west of the oil town of Basra, a second attack took place also near a crowded market. Ten people died.
Another car bomb exploded in the Hussainiya district of the northern outskirts of Baghdad, killing 12 people.
Islamic State, the ultra-hardline Sunni group that controls a third of the country and wants to redraw the map of the Middle East, claimed responsibility for the car bomb attack in Al Zubair through an affiliated Twitter account.
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