A series of bombs hit Baghdad Tuesday killing at least a dozen and injuring scores others.

photo: Reuters These are the latest in a string of attacks targeting Shiites.

The Associated Press reports on the attacks:

Tuesday's first attack targeted an early morning gathering of day labourers in Baghdad's Sadr City neighbourhood. Police said eight were killed and another 21 wounded. Minutes later, an explosives-packed car blew up near a pastry shop in the same district, killing three people and wounding 26, police said.

Later in the morning, two more explosives-laden cars detonated, killing three and wounding 29 people.

A parked car bomb exploded near a high school at 10:30 a.m. in the predominantly Shia neighbourhood of Shula in northern Baghdad, killing two students and wounding 16 others, most of them also students, according to local police.

In the neighbouring district of Hurriya, one person was killed when an explosives-packed car, parked along a busy commercial street detonated five minutes after the Shula blast, police officials said. Thirteen people were injured in that bombing.

Reuters has more from two victims:

“We were all standing waiting to earn our living and all of a sudden it was like a black storm and I felt myself thrown on the ground,” said Ahmed Ali, a 40-year-old labourer whose face and hair were burned by the explosion.

“I fainted for a while then I woke up and hurried to one of the cars to take me to the hospital,” said Mr. Ali, lying on a bed in the emergency room at Imam Ali hospital in Sadr City.

Reuters adds:

Violence in Iraq has dropped sharply from the height of sectarian killing in 2006-07, but insurgents and militias still carry out daily attacks and assassinations in an attempt to undermine the government.

Iraq has been hit by a series of bombings targeting Shiites during the worst political crisis in a year, which threatens to break up a fragile coalition government and has raised fears of renewed sectarian violence after U.S. troops left on Dec. 18.