A car bomb ripped through a packed food market north of Baghdad killing 32 people today, as the year's death toll topped 5,800 amid a surge in violence nationwide.
The flare-up has prompted Baghdad to appeal for international help in fighting the country's worst bloodshed since 2008, just months before Iraq's first general election in four years.
Officials have voiced concern over a resurgent al-Qaeda emboldened by the civil war in neighbouring Syria which has provided the jihadist network's front groups with increased room to plan and carry out attacks in Iraq.
Today's attack came a day after a spate of attacks, most of them car bombs targeting Shiite neighbourhoods of Baghdad, killed 59 people and wounded more than 100 in Iraq's highest death toll of the month.
The latest bombing struck around noon (0900 GMT) near a cafe in a food market in the town of Saadiyah, in ethnically mixed Diyala province northeast of Baghdad.
At least 32 people were killed and 40 wounded in the blast, a police colonel and a doctor said, both speaking on condition of anonymity.
Saadiyah is populated mostly by Faylis, or Shiite Kurds, and lies in a tract of territory that Kurdish leaders want to incorporate in their autonomous region in the north over the objections of the central government.
Militants frequently exploit poor communication between Kurdish and central government security forces to carry out attacks.
On November 14, a suicide bomber targeted a group of Shiite pilgrims in the town on the anniversary of the death of a venerated figure in Shiite Islam, killing 32 people.
Another blast in Diyala today killed one person, officials said.
Authorities also found the bodies of a dozen residents snatched by kidnappers purporting to be members of the security forces.
The 12 were executed and their bodies thrown into a nearby river, reminiscent of targeted killings that were rampant during the worst of Iraq's sectarian bloodshed in 2006 and 2007.
No group has claimed responsibility for the violence, but Sunni militants linked to al-Qaeda often carry out such attacks, ostensibly to undermine confidence in the Shiite-led government and security forces.
