A series of bombs targeting restaurants across the Iraqi capital Baghdad have killed at least 21 people, police and medics said.

Twelve people were killed in Baghdad's northern Talibiya district on Tuesday when a car bomb blew up directly in front of a restaurant and another in a parking area.

A homemade bomb exploded close to a restaurant in Baghdad's Sheikh Omar neighbourhood, killing two civilians, and two more blasts near restaurants in the south of the capital left a further seven people dead, police and medical sources said.

The bombings are the latest in a series targeting members of Iraq's Shia majority who are considered heretics by fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

ISIL has overrun large parts of Iraq and neighbouring Syria and surged towards Baghdad in June after seizing the northern city of Mosul but have not captured the capital.

Al Jazeera