At least 33 people were killed and more than 50 injured in two bomb blasts in the southern city of Samawa in Iraq today, security and medical officials said.

A senior official in the Muthanna Health Department, which covers Samawa, told a news agency that the hospitals have received 33 dead.

An officer in Muthanna Operations Command also confirmed the toll. Samawa is the capital of Muthanna and lies deep in Iraq’s Shiite heartland and such attacks there are rare.

Muthanna also borders Saudi Arabia and a vast Iraqi desert that connects the troubled province of Anbar with the south.

A car bomb just outside Baghdad yesterday killed at least 23 people, according to security and medical sources.