ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION)

At least 45 people were killed in bombings in Baghdad and its rural outskirts on Saturday (October 11) as the government continued to defend the capital against jihadists who four months ago seized major cities in northern Iraq.

Islamic State fighters, who took control of large sections of Iraq this year, regularly target Shi'ite districts in Baghdad and are penetrating surrounding farmland despite efforts by Iraqi security forces and Shi'ite militias to push them back.

In west Baghdad, 34 people were killed by three car bombs in Shi'ite neighbourhoods on Saturday evening, police and medical officials said.

A suicide bomber blew up his vehicle up at a traffic roundabout in Kadhimiya, killing 11 people, three of them police officers, officials said. Another 27 were wounded.

In the Shaoula neighbourhood, two bombs were detonated on the same street just 30 minutes apart.

In the first attack, a bomb in a parked car explo