Baghdad:
A suicide car bomber on Monday detonated an explosives-packed vehicle near a prison north of Baghdad, killing up to 13 people, while another attack cost two more lives, Iraqi security officials said.
The 8:00 am (local time) car bombing at the main entrance of Hout prison in Taji, about 25 kilometres from Baghdad, came as family members gathered to visit inmates, they said.
An interior ministry official said 13 people were killed and 28 wounded, while a defence ministry official put the toll at 12 dead and 26 wounded.
The interior ministry official said the bodies of nine victims, most of them prison guards, were severely burned, while the four others killed were civilians.
The interior ministry official also said two people were killed and four wounded by a magnetic "sticky bomb" on a vehicle in the Mansur area in western Baghdad.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity. Justice ministry spokesman Haidar al-Saadi said that six of the dead in Taji were police working under the ministry who were on their way to work at the prison.
The bomber "blew himself up on the highway near the prison, where family members of prisoners were gathering" before visiting inmates, Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim Atta said.
The deaths raise the toll from a week of surging violence across Iraq to 55.
Bomb and gun attacks killed four people yesterday and wounded nine while the previous day 16 people were killed and 20 wounded in bombings and shootings in Baghdad and Abu Ghraib, about 20 kilometres west of the capital.
Three bombs exploded in the southern port city of Basra last Thursday, killing 19 people, including high-ranking army and police officers, and wounding at least 65.