Baghdad:A series of more than 20 attacks across Iraq killed 52 people and wounded over 250 today, security and medical officials said, with targets including security forces and markets. The latest violence brings the number of people killed in attacks so far this month to 82, according to an AFP tally based on security and medical sources.

In the deadliest attack today, two car bombs exploded in a market near the shrine of Imam Ali al-Sharqi in south Iraq, a security official said. Dr Ali al-Alaa, a Maysan province health department official, said the blasts killed 14 people and wounded 60. Before midnight yesterday gunmen opened fire on an Iraqi army checkpoint near Balad north of Baghdad and shortly later a roadside bomb exploded when additional soldiers arrived.

Eleven soldiers, including two officers, were killed and eight others wounded, an army colonel and a medical source at Balad hospital said. A police captain was also shot dead yesterday night in the town of Garma, security and medical officials said.

Early today morning a car bomb exploded in a car park at the rear gate of the state-owned North Oil Company, about 15 kilometres from the northern city of Kirkuk, killing seven people and wounding 17 others, police and Dr Othman Abdul Rahman said.

The victims were seeking to join a force that guards oil facilities, a police officer said. The North Oil Company is responsible for oil exports from northern Iraq.