DHAKA: At least 55 people have been killed in a series of suicide explosions in Iraqi cities, with the highest death toll reported at a cafe in a Shia Baghdad neighbourhood.

Sunday`s cafe attack killed at least 36 people and wounded 45 others.

Police officials said they saw a suicide bomber ram his explosive-laden car into a busy cafe in Baghdad`s Amil neighbourhood on Sunday night.

The cafe and nearby shops were damaged in the attack, police said.

Earlier, police said at least eight people were killed and 20 others injured when eight suicide bombers targeted police stations and the local council, a police station and an army checkpoint in the town of Rawa, west of Baghdad.

Police Captain Mohammed Ahmed al-Rawi said two suicide bombers on foot and another driving a vehicle rigged with explosives attacked the police headquarters for the area, while another driving a vehicle hit an army checkpoint at the town`s entrance.

That attack claimed the head of the local council, two council members and five policemen.

In other violence, six civilians were killed and 10 injured when a roadside bomb and a car bomb, targeting the house of the chief of police, exploded in Tikrit, the northern home town of former president Saddam Hussein.

Violence has been on the rise in Iraq following a deadly crackdown by security forces on a Sunni protest camp in the northern town of Hawijah in April.

Places such as cafes, markets and mosques are favourite targets for fighters in Iraq.

Hospital officials confirmed the casualty figure.

The latest attacks bring the death toll to more than 450 so far this month, and over 5,150 since the beginning of the year, according to figures from the news agency AFP based on security and medical sources.

A study released this month by academics based in Canada, Iraq and the United States said nearly half a million people had died from war-related causes in Iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003.

BDST: 1339 HRS, OCT 21, 2013
MR/AKA/BSK