Tuesday's blast in Baghdad's Karrada district, where three people died, happened after an assailant posing as a customer left his car at an auto repair shop, asking for a brake job.

"He said he would leave the car and go looking for spare parts, and then he left," the owner, who identified himself as Abu Nuri, told news agency AFP. "Only one of my employees was in the shop when a huge explosion went off. He fell down, and smoke was everywhere. Many people were crying, and others were running away." Abu Nuri added: "The state has failed, it has completely failed!"

The attacks, comprising up to 10 apparently coordinated car bombs during Tuesday's morning gridlock, also wounded at least 50 people and came on the birthday of Imam Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad and Shiite Islam's most sacred martyr.

Smoke rose above several areas of the capital, and news agencies reported shop fronts badly damaged and cars reduced to mangled wrecks of metal.

Two car bombs also exploded near a traffic police headquarters in the eastern Baladiyat neighborhood, and blasts hit the Shiite-majority neighborhoods of Sadr City (pictured), Urr, Jamila and Maamal. A roadside bomb also went off near a police patrol in southeast Baghdad, killing one.

A vehicle rigged with explosives also detonated in the mostly Sunni area of Arab Jubour, killing three. Just north of the capital, a rocket attack killed two people, including a young boy, and two others died in a car bomb in the town of Balad.

The attacks came as officials continued to tally votes from elections held on April 30. The run-up to the polls had also seen several incidences of violence.

#links:17529167:A protracted surge in bloodshed# has killed more than 3,300 people this year. The United Nations estimates that such attacks killed 8,868 across the country in 2013, the highest annual death toll in Iraq in five years.

The influence of sectarian militant groups has #links:17348602:also expanded in neighboring Syria,# which is in a three-year civil war.

mkg/kms (AFP, dpa, AP)