By Mariam Karouny
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A car bomb and a suicide bomber killed 60 people and wounded 110 more, including many students blown up as they waited for cars to take them home at the entrance to a university in Baghdad, police said.
"The majority of those killed are female students who were on their way home," an official at the historic al-Mustansiriya University's media office said.
A police source said a car bomb exploded near the main gate of the university in an area where students wait for minibuses and cars to pick them up to go home. A suicide bomber then blew himself up near a second gate to the university as people fled the first explosion.
The university official said the head of the university, Takki Moussawi, had cancelled classes for two days.
"There is no way people could sit and study. There's glass everywhere and the doors were blown out," the official said.
The bombings were one of a string of attacks across Baghdad on Tuesday as the government prepares to launch a major security crackdown in the capital. The attacks also come the day after the execution of two of Saddam Hussein's aides which fuelled anger among his fellow Sunni Arabs.
The day after Saddam's execution at the end of December there were a series of bombings in Shi'ite areas.
The United Nations said on Tuesday Iraqi academics were increasingly fleeing the country in the face of violence and were frequent targets across Iraq, with at least 155 education professionals killed since 2003.
"Academics have apparently been singled out for their relatively respected public status, vulnerability and views on controversial issues in a climate of deepening Islamic extremism," the latest U.N. rights report on Iraq said.
At least 25 people were killed by four other bombs around the city on Tuesday, including a twin attack in one location.
In the twin bombing, a roadside bomb followed by a blast from a motorcycle rigged with explosives killed 15 people and wounded 70 near a Sunni mosque in Khilani in central Baghdad on Tuesday, an interior ministry source said.
Earlier in another central Baghdad area, Karrada, police had just succeeded in defusing a roadside bomb when another bomb exploded, killing four people, including two police. Another car bomb in Sadr City, a Shi'ite militia stronghold, killed six.
Ten more people were killed in a drive-by shooting in Binoog, a mixed neighbourhood not far from Mustansiriya.
The United Nations said on Tuesday more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in violence last year.
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