Stepped-up attacks on Monday killed over 50 Iraqis, including some 20 around a famous Baghdad hotel.
In the biggest attack, three huge bombs went off outside the Palestine Hotel - home to many foreign journalists - killing some 20 people and wounding 15 others. Iraqi security sources said the blasts occurred two minutes apart. The attacks caused heavy damage to the south side of the 19-story hotel.
In another major attack, gunmen killed 12 Iraqi construction workers on Monday during an attack in the town of Mussayyib, south of Baghdad, police said. Five of the victims were brothers. A police source, quoted by Reuters said the attackers also abducted the contractor who had hired the workers.
In addition, the bodies of eight Iraqis who apparently were kidnapped and killed in captivity were located in Baghdad on Monday, police said.
In another attack on Monday, gunmen in southwestern Baghdad opened fire at two civilian cars, killing three municipal workers and a passer-by, police said, according to the AP.
Elsewhere, a suicide car bomber killed two Iraqis and injured five in an attack on a police patrol in the northeastern neighborhood of Shaab.
In addition, gunmen opened fire on an Iraqi army checkpoint in western Baghdad, killing a soldier and a girl who was standing in front of her nearby house.
In two other attacks in Baghdad, a drive-by shooting killed one policeman and two others were injured by a roadside bomb, authorities said.
In Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, a roadside bomb went off at 8:30 a.m. near a car carrying Ibrahim Zangana, a senior member of Iraq's Kurdish Democratic Party, seriously wounding him and killing one of his bodyguards. A drive-by shooting in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, killed a policeman.
