Bombers killed at least 24 people in two attacks on Iraqi families shopping on Saturday for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, in a deadly response to an appeal for peace from religious leaders.
As night fell, five bicycle bombs exploded in a crowded market just as families shopped for food for the traditional evening meal held during the dawn-to-dusk fasting month of Ramazan, a defence ministry spokesman said.
At least 20 people were killed and 30 more wounded in the attack in Mahmudiyah, 30 kilometres (20 miles) south-west of the capital, in one of the bloodiest attacks of its type in recent weeks.
In an earlier blast, a suicide attacker detonated a bomb on board a bus returning from one of Baghdad's largest markets, killing four people and wounding 15, mainly women and children headed home with shopping.
The deadly attacks came as US military casualties continued to mount three more marines were reported dead and as militias skirmished with Iraqi police in at least two southern cities.
Meanwhile, US President George Bush met with his top military commanders and advisors to mull over their strategy in Iraq.
Children's clothes and toys were scattered across a bridge over the Tigris that runs from one of Baghdad's biggest public markets, crammed with families preparing for next week's Eid which marks the end of Ramazan.
"Is this the Makkah document? Killing children and those buying toys for them?" roared Abu Sajad, a stocky white-bearded man in his 50s at the scene. "The holidays are the only days now when children are happy."
He was referring to a meeting in the holy city of Makkah, Saudi Arabia of 29 religious leaders from bitterly divided Sunni and Shia sects that was aimed at stanching the bloody sectarian violence in Iraq.
They urged Iraqis not to shed Muslim blood and called on them to "join ranks with a view to the independence of Iraq and its territorial integrity".
The text included calls to safeguard the "goods, blood and honour of Muslims", to free innocent people who have been abducted, and to "allow displaced people to return to their place of origin".
A few hours after the bus bomb, a second blast near the health ministry killed one person and wounded three.
Iraq's mixed provinces, such as Baghdad, Diyala and Kirkuk, have been swept by violence as gunmen from rival communities target civilians and leave piles of corpses in city streets.
In Diyala province alone, 9,000 people have been killed since the fall of the old regime in March 2003 and at least 30,000 displaced -- most of them Shiites, said the provincial police commander.
On Saturday police in the province found six more bodies of dead people, including three without heads.
In the southern city of Amara, government envoys negotiated a cease-fire after two days of deadly clashes between police and Shiite militiamen left two dozen dead.
But fighting flared elsewhere, with clashes reported in the south-central towns of Suweira and Hilla.
Interior Minister Jawad Bolani met with Moqtada al-Sadr, one of the most powerful militia leaders in the country, and praised him for his efforts to end the Amara clashes.
The Makkah meeting, held under the auspices of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, was just the latest of many calls by the country's leaders for an end to internecine killing.
Nevertheless, many Iraqis clung to the hope that the prestigious and sacred site of the meeting, in Islam's holiest city, would have an impact.
"The document of Makkah was born inside the noble Makkah shrine, a few metres away from the Holy Kaaba and at the end of the holy month of Ramazan," said an optimistic front-page editorial in the state-owned daily Al-Sabah.
"This means that the values of Islam and divine teachings shall be a witness," it said.
But Baghdad bookstore owner Emad Abdel Hussein, 35, noted that it would not work unless the warring parties themselves want stability.
"I doubt it will be implemented any time soon unless some sort of active implementation measure is provided," he told AFP.
US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad applauded Iraq's leaders for the conference but also emphasised the key was implementation.
"I urge Iraqi leaders to respond to this moral compact by doing everything possible to stop the killing of the innocent," he said. "Iraqis have suffered enough."
Since the February bombing of a Shiite shrine north of Baghdad, the violence has increasingly resembled a civil war, in a succession of tit-for-tat killings.
This has led many to lose confidence in state security organs and instead put their faith in armed groups for protection.
Attempts by coalition troops to hand control of the country to Iraq's security forces have foundered as local forces have in many cases collaborated with militias or been intimidated by them.