Sabah Arar / AFP - Getty Images
Iraqis inspect the damage following a blast in central Baghdad on Thursday.
By msnbc.com news services
Updated at 4:09 a.m. ET: BAGHDAD -- A swift series of bombings and shootings killed?dozens of?people across Iraq early Thursday in attacks that mostly appeared to target police, officials said.
At least 50 people were killed,?police and hospital sources told Reuters.
In the worst attack, a car bomb went off near a security checkpoint in Baghdad's downtown shopping district of Karradah killing at least?nine people. Twenty-six people were wounded in that attack, including four policemen, the officials said.
Associated Press footage of the scene showed blood-covered people walking away, and storefronts at several nearby shops were damaged. A gray cloud of smoke hung over the blast site where cars were charred and crumpled.
At least eight more bombs exploded during the morning across Baghdad, killing 18 more people.
Silenced pistols
And on opposite sides of the capital, gunmen with silenced pistols killed a total of eight policemen at security checkpoints, officials said.
The violence did not stop at Baghdad. Attacks in Baqouba, Kirkuk and in Salahuddin provinces were also reported in the relentless string of assaults that unfolded over a two-hour period.
Officials in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of the capital, said a suicide bomber blew up his car outside a police station near a market. Two people were killed and eight wounded.
In the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, two police patrols hit roadside bombs. Twenty policemen were injured in the attacks, said police Maj. Gen. Sarhat Qadir.
US Embassy in Iraq facing cuts amid ongoing violence
Bombs in the town of Tuz Khormato outside Kirkuk, wounded three guards outside the office of a Kurdish political party. And south of Baghdad, eight policemen were wounded by a roadside bomb in the town of Madain, said Mayor Jalal Baban. Madain is about 14 miles southeast of the capital.
On Sunday, a suicide car bombing killed 19 people at a Baghdad police academy.
Tensions have been high in Iraq as it struggles with its worst political turmoil in a year in the aftermath of the U.S. troop withdrawal nearly nine years after the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.
Decorated former Navy SEAL marksman Chris Kyle, author of a new book about the super-secret military personnel who are assigned the most-dangerous missions, talks about some of the bloodiest battles of the war in Iraq.
Attacks against mostly Shiite targets surged after Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government moved against senior members of the Sunni-backed Iraqiya political bloc.
While violence has ebbed since the height of the war, al-Qaida affliliated Sunni Islamist insurgents are still capable of major attacks. They often target government buildings and Iraqi security forces.
Political turbulence
Widespread violence has decreased since just a few years ago when Iraq teetered on the brink of civil war. But bombings and deadly shootings still happen almost daily.
The country has been besieged by political turbulence that began the day after U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq, when an arrest warrant was issued for Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi on charges he commandeered death squads targeting security forces and government officials.
Al-Hashemi, the country's highest-ranking Sunni, has denied the charges that he described as politically motivated, and blamed the Shiite-led government of trying to unseat him.
Experts worry the case will hike Iraq's already-simmering sectarian tensions.
More from msnbc.com and NBC News:
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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