BAGHDAD, Iraq — Violence raged unabated in Iraq today as bomb attacks killed at least 26 people in Baghdad and mortar rounds fell on homes in a nearby town.

A spokesman for the powerful Association of Muslim Scholars, meanwhile, blasted the government for failing to staunch the deadly sectarian attacks over the past week that have pushed the country toward civil war.

"It is clear that the government and its security forces are incapable of taking any action," said Abdul-Salam al-Kubaisi, a spokesman for the Sunni clerical group. Government forces, he said, should "do their duty and withdraw to the Green Zone," the secure region in central Baghdad that houses the U.S. Embassy.

Al-Kubaisi denied Sunnis were behind the latest attacks, saying Shiite politicians and religious leaders were trying to inflame sectarian hatred "to make use of these events and everything in this country to achieve one goal — to serve their future interests."

Today's most dramatic attack — a car bomb near a traffic police office in a primarily Shiite neighborhood in southeast Baghdad — killed at least 23 people and wounded 58, according to police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud.

About an hour earlier, a bomb hidden under a car detonated as a police patrol was passing near downtown Tahrir Square, said Interior Ministry Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi. Three civilians died and 15 were injured.

Also today, mortar shells fell on three houses in the mixed Sunni-Shiite town of Mahmoudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing three civilians, said police Capt. Rashid al-Samaraie.

The latest blasts occurred one day after Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad traded bombings and mortar fire against mainly religious targets, killing at least 68 people following an end to curfews and vehicle restrictions that had briefly calmed a series of sectarian reprisal attacks.

At least six of Tuesday's attacks hit religious targets, concluding with a car bombing after sundown at the Shiite Abdel Hadi Chalabi mosque in the Hurriyah neighborhood that killed 23 and wounded 55.