BAGHDAD: A series of apparently coordinated bombings across Iraq on the eve on Wednesday of a Muslim festival marking the Islamic new year killed 15 people and wounded dozens, security and medical officials said.

The early-morning blasts — five car bombs and a roadside bomb — struck in Baghdad and three other cities, and will likely raise tensions in a country that only recently emerged from a brutal sectarian war.

The deadliest blasts occurred in Kirkuk, a disputed ethnically-mixed oil-rich province in north Iraq that is frequently targeted by militants seeking to sow communal violence, where at least nine people were killed and 39 wounded.