A car bomb and a suicide bomber killed 60 people and injured 110, including many students blown up when they waited at the entrance to a university in Baghdad on Tuesday, police said.
Other bombings and a mass shooting brought to at least 95 the death toll in Baghdad.
A police source said a car bomb went off near the main gate of the Mustansiriya University in an area where students, many of them women, wait for minibuses and cars to pick them up to go home. A suicide bomber on foot then blew himself up near a second gate to the campus as people fled the first explosion.
Earlier, a roadside bomb hit a police patrol in a predominantly Shiite district of downtown Baghdad on Tuesday, killing four people and injuring 10, police said. Three policemen and one civilian died in the 10:15 a.m. explosion near a square in the commercial district of Karradah, according to authorities.
Gunmen also killed two people, including an employee of an anti-corruption commission in a drive-by shooting in Mosul, police said, according to the AP.
Saudi backing
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia said on Tuesday that Arab countries were ready to back a U.S. plan to stabilize Iraq but insisted that only Iraqis can make it succeed. "We agree fully with the goals set by the new strategy, which in our view are the goals that -- if implemented -- would solve the problems that face Iraq," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said at a joint news conference with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Riyadh.
"(But) implementation also requires a (positive) response by the Iraqis themselves to these goals... Other countries can help but the main responsibility in taking decisions rests on the Iraqis," he added, according to Reuters.
"We will continue to work with the Iraqi government to make sure networks running dangerous militias are stopped," Rice told reporters in Riyadh, before heading to Kuwait.
"I want to underscore that the Saudis were very helpful in helping us to think through some of the elements of Iraq. We have the same goal, which is an Iraq unified with its integrity and territory intact which doesn't face outside interference," Rice said.
"An Iraq where all Iraqis are treated equally and can depend on the protection of the state without regard to religion or ethnicity," she added.
