KARBALA, Iraq (Agencies) -- Bombings in Karbala and the Baghdad area killed at least 56 people and wounded scores of others Saturday morning, police and medical officials said.

A car bomb blast in a crowded shopping area of central Karbala, a holy Shiite city about 70 miles southwest of Baghdad, killed at least 43 people and wounded 55, according to an official at Hussein Hospital in Karbala, CNN reported.

The explosion went off near a bus station and just 200 yards from the Imam Hussein shrine. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini called the terrorist attack a “criminal act which is against divine and Islamic values.”

Hosseini expressed sympathy with the Iraqi nation and said the “hideous and suspicious act” targeting ordinary people in Karbala was carried out by agents connected to “foreign organizations” as part of their evil plot to undermine Islamic unity.

In order to avoid the repetition of such violent acts, appropriate steps must be taken, such as promoting unity and vigilance among Iraqis and making efforts to accelerate the withdrawal of the occupiers, the Iranian official opined.

Video of the scene broadcast on Iraqi television showed hundreds of people crowded around the bomb site as emergency workers placed victims in ambulances.

A short time later, a car bomb exploded on the Jadriya bridge, which spans the Tigris River in southern Baghdad, killing at least 10 people and wounding 15 others, Iraqi police said. It was not immediately clear how badly the bridge was damaged.

The Jadriya bridge attack came two days after a suicide car bomb detonated on the Sarafiya bridge, which crosses the Tigris in northern Baghdad, also killing 10 people. Two large sections of the bridge collapsed into the river.

Eleven major bridges cross the Tigris River in Baghdad.

In other violence Saturday morning, a roadside bomb blast that targeted a police patrol in Madaan killed two Iraqi police officers and one civilian. Madaan is about 12 miles southeast of Baghdad. Four police officers and four civilians were also hurt.

Also, gunmen attacked the home of a Sunni member of Iraq's parliament Saturday morning. Five guards were wounded in the half-hour battle at the western Baghdad residence of Adnan al-Dulaimi, the head of the Sunni political party known as the General Conference of People of Iraq.

Five other Iraqis were wounded in two separate roadside bomb explosions in Baghdad.

British soldiers killed eight insurgents who were planting roadside bombs on the outskirts of the southern Iraqi city of Basra Friday night, a statement from the British military said.