A wave of attacks in Baghdad and north of the capital today left at least 23 people dead a day after a Sunni MP was killed in a suicide bombing, amid a worsening political crisis engulfing Iraq. The latest violence, the deadliest of which targeted Kurdish political party offices in disputed territory in north Iraq, comes with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki facing several protests hardening opposition against his rule and calls for his ouster from many of his erstwhile government partners. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, which also left more than 200 people wounded, but Sunni militants regularly carry out waves of violence in a bid to destabilise the government and push the country back towards the sectarian violence that blighted it from 2005 to 2008. Today’s deadliest attacks struck the ethnically-mixed city of Kirkuk, 240 kilometres north of Baghdad, where two car bombs in the same neighbourhood killed at least 16 people and wounded 190 others, according to provincial health chief Sadiq Omar Rasul.