In Baghdad, at least 250 other people were wounded in the multiple car bomb and mortar onslaught in the Shi'ite Sadr City slum, the deadliest attack of the entire conflict to date.

It has left political leaders from the Shi'ite majority and the once dominant Sunni community scrambling to appeal for calm.

With Baghdad locked down in indefinite curfew, politicians hope clerical leaders echo those calls in Friday sermons as Muslims go their separate ways to mosques across the city.

One renowned Sunni mosque was hit by a mortar round in an apparent retaliatory strike from Sadr City the night before.

In Tal Afar, one bomber drove a car laden with explosives and another blew himself up with a suicide vest, killing 22 people at a market, a police officer in the regional capital Mosul said.

Close to the Syrian border and mostly populated by ethnic Turkish speakers, Tal Afar was once a bastion for al Qaeda-linked Sunni guerrillas but has been held up for the past year by the U.S. military as an example of successful counter-insurgency operations.

Local Sunnis complain, however, of discrimation against them by U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces dominated by Shi'ites.

Funerals

Barring security forces, the only movement in the streets of the capital was thousands of mourners streaming on foot behind cars laden with coffins as they began their journey south to the holy city of Najaf, traditional burial site for pious Shi'ites.

At Najaf, bodies packed premises set aside near its ancient cemetery for the ritual washing of the dead before interment.

Moqtada al-Sadr, youthful cleric and leader of the Mehdi Army militia which dominates Sadr City, also appealed for Iraqis to unite in peace and many in the district, home to over 2 million people, said they hoped all would control their anger.

At the end of the day we are all losers," one local man, Hassan, said as the funeral processions passed by. "This is our home, our country. Sunnis and Shi'ites must come together to rebuild our country so we can breathe the air."

Daylight also brought new visions of the mangled metal wrought by six car bombs and a series of mortar blasts that in its turn transformed streets and a market into a bloodbath.

Already, after months of mounting sectarian violence since the destruction of a Shi'ite shrine at Samarra in February, the capital is under curfew for several hours during Friday prayers.

Now the curfew is absolute and indefinite, with Baghdad airport also closed and the key oil port of Basra in the south, controlled by Shi'ite parties, also shutting down in sympathy.

The U.S.-backed national unity government issued urgent calls for peace in earnest televised statements on Thursday.

Source: Reuters