BAGHDAD - Bombs pounded six Iraqi cities and towns on Tuesday, killing at least 40 people and raising suspicions that security forces might be assisting terrorists in launching attacks on Shiite Muslims.
The onslaught came just ahead of a religious pilgrimage that could attract even more violence.
A senior Iraqi intelligence official said checkpoint guards may have been bribed to help Al-Qaida-linked Sunni insurgents plant bombs at Shiite marketplaces.
The attacks injected new fear into Iraqis, resigned to worsening violence six months after the last U.S. troops left the country.
"We want to live a normal life, but with the current spike in violence and victims, I am personally thinking of moving," said Hassan al-Saadi, 40, a Shiite sports equipment store owner in Baghdad who is considering pulling his four children from school for their safety. "I see the future as worse."
A spike in violence over the past month is blamed partly on Iraq's paralyzing political crisis, which pits Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite-led government against rival Shiite politicians, Sunni Muslims and ethic Kurds who complain they've been sidelined.
Tuesday's deadliest attacks hit the southern Shiite cities of Karbala and Diwaniyah. Despite the risk, hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims are expected to gather on Friday in Karbala for an annual religious observance.
Sunnis also were targeted. Two blasts hit a residential area in the Sunni city of Taji, just north of the capital, killing three people. Four people died in bombings and shootings in Sunni-dominated Diyala Province in Iraq's northeast.
