At least 17 people were killed in violence in Iraq on Friday, most of whom died in a double bombing near a football field in the northern city of Tikrit.
According to police, 13 people were killed and 25 injured as a car bomb and another explosive device went off in Tuz Khurmato, a town 170 kilometres north of Baghdad that has a majority ethnic Turkmen population.
Four people were killed and eight injured in two separate attacks in the central Iraqi city of Baquba.
The attacks came after the Iraqi branch of the al-Qaeda terrorist network claimed responsibility for a spate of apparently synchronised bombings that killed at least 66 people on Wednesday, mostly in and around the capital Baghdad.
There has been a sharp rise in sectarian violence in Iraq in recent months. The United Nations said that 1,057 people were killed in July, the deadliest month in more than five years.