BAGHDAD: Al-Qaeda front organization the Islamic State of Iraq posted a claim on the Internet Monday for a wave of more than 30 attacks around the country that killed at least 88 people and wounded more than 400 over the weekend.

The bombings and shootings were in response to the “campaign of extermination and torture of Sunni Muslim detainees in Safavid prisons,” the statement said in a pejorative reference to the Shiite-led government implying that it was under the domination of formerly Safavid-ruled neighboring Iran.

Iraq executed 26 convicts in August, many implicated in attacks claimed by Al-Qaeda.

“This message ... will be followed by another. Today will be a new black day,” the posting added.

In the latest violence, a bombing and a shooting killed four people Monday, security and medical officials said.

A magnetic “sticky bomb” attached to a minibus killed three civilians and wounded two soldiers near the shrine of Imam al-Khodr in Mussayib, 60 kilometers south of Baghdad, an army official and doctor said.

In Kirkuk, gunmen shot dead district chief Abbas Najaf Agha, a security official and Dr. Nabil Hamdi.