Ahlul Bayt News Agency , An apparently co-ordinated series of attacks targeting security forces and a Shiite mosque in Iraq killed 31 people on Monday in the worst violence to hit the country in more than a fortnight.

The bloodshed began in Baghdad where shootings with automatic weapons against six police or army checkpoints in eastern and western sectors of the city accounted for seven of the dead, an interior ministry official said.

Two other policemen died in three bombings in south and west Baghdad.

“The attacks started at 6:30 am (0330 GMT) and ended around 8:00 am (0500 GMT),” the official said, noting that nearly all of the wounded were security personnel.

A double bomb attack near the mosque in Suwayrah, 60 kilometres (37 miles) southeast of the capital, killed 11 people and wounded 70, a police lieutenant told AFP.

There were also four bomb attacks on houses in and around the former Sunni insurgent bastion of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, three of which were owned by security officials. Police and a doctor at Fallujah hospital confirmed a total of four people had been killed and 11 injured in the attacks.

Seven other people were killed in separate attacks near the main northercity of Mosul, in Iskandiriyah south of Baghdad, and near Tarmiyah, north of the Iraqi capital.

Monday’s death toll was the highest since April 23, when 58 people were killed in series of bombings in Baghdad and western Iraq, days after the government said Al-Qaeda was on the run.

There were around 20 attacks in total on Monday.

Major General Qassim Atta, a security forces spokesman in Baghdad, said the attacks appeared to be coordinated