At least 13 people have been killed in new bomb attacks in Iraq, a day after a wave of bombings across the country left at least 70 people dead.

Two car bombs hit the northern town of Tuz Khurmato, a device went off in a cattle market in Kirkuk, and a suicide bomber struck in the town of Tarmiyah.

The spate of bombings has marked the period as one of the most violent in Iraq in recent months.

The attacks have been linked to growing political and sectarian tension.

In the latest attacks, three people were killed when the bombs went off simultaneously in Tuz Khurmato, a town populated mainly by ethnic Turkmen.

Tuz Khurmato is claimed by the government in Baghdad and ethnic Kurds, who inhabit a semi-autonomous region in the north.

Elsewhere, gunmen and a suicide bomber killed three people in an attack on an army patrol in a Sunni area of Tarmiyah, 50km (30 miles) north of Baghdad.

Further north, six people died when three bombs exploded in the cattle market in al-Aruba district in Kirkuk. The string of attacks also left dozens of people injured.

Iraq has been rocked by bombings since Monday, when attacks wreaked carnage across the country.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki vowed to make immediate changes to Iraq's security strategy and pledged that militants "will not be able to return [Iraq] to the sectarian conflict".

No group has said it carried out Monday's attacks, but tension between the Shia Muslim majority, which leads the government, and minority Sunnis has been growing since last year.

Violence has surged over the past month since an army raid on a Sunni anti-government protest camp near the northern town of Hawija left 50 people dead.

The demonstrators accused the government of targeting the Sunni community, something the government denies.

There are fears the level of violence might return to the kind reached at its peak in 2006 and 2007.

BBC