More than 150 dead in Iraq blasts
At least 157 people have been killed in a string of attacks in Iraq's capital, Baghdad, security officials say.
In the deadliest incident, some 115 people were killed in a car bombing in a food market in Sadriya district.
An attack on a police checkpoint in Sadr City and several other explosions left at least another 42 people dead.
The attacks came as Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said Iraqi forces would assume control of the country's security by the end of the year.
On Monday, the Iraqi parliament bloc loyal to radical cleric Moqtada Sadr withdrew from the cabinet, demanding Mr Maliki set a timetable for a US troop withdrawal.
'Unidentifiable'
The bomb in Shia-dominated Sadriya was reportedly left in a parked car and exploded at about 1600 (1200 GMT) in the middle of a crowd of workers and shoppers.
The market was being rebuilt after it was destroyed by a bombing in February which killed more than 130 people.
The powerful bomb started a fire which swept over cars and minibuses parked nearby, burning many people and sending a large plume of smoke over Baghdad.
One witness told the Reuters news agency that many of the victims were women and children.
"I saw dozens of dead bodies," the man said. "Some people were burned alive inside minibuses. Nobody could reach them after the explosion.
"There were pieces of flesh all over the place."
About an hour earlier, a suicide car bomb attack on a police checkpoint in Sadr City killed 30 people.
Another parked car bomb killed at least 10 people near a hospital in the Karrada district of Baghdad, while in al-Shurja district at least two people were killed by a bomb left on a minibus.
Car and suicide bombings have occurred almost daily in Baghdad in recent months, despite a US-led security crackdown since February.
The bombers are proving that they can slip through the tightened security net and defy the clampdown, says the BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad.
Security handover
Most of the attacks have been in Shia areas, increasing pressure for the Shia militias to step up their campaign of reprisal killings against the Sunni community in which the insurgents are based, says our correspondent.
As Baghdad was rocked by explosions, security in Maysan province to the south was transferred from British to Iraqi control.
Iraq's national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said the three provinces of the autonomous Kurdish region would be next.
"Then it will be province by province until we achieve [the complete transfer] before the end of the year," he said in a speech at the handover ceremony delivered on behalf of Prime Minister Maliki.
The attacks in Baghdad came as officials from more than 60 countries attended a UN conference in Geneva on the plight of Iraqi refugees.
The UN estimates up to 50,000 people flee the violence in Iraq each month.
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