Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Friday dismissed three officials in charge of Baghdad's security after last weekend's bombing that killed nearly 300 people and caused outrage at the inadequacy of emergency services and the security apparatus.
A statement posted on his Facebook page said he had fired the commander of military operations, security services and intelligence in the capital.
The bombing, claimed by the ultra-hardline Sunni militant group Islamic State, was the deadliest bombing in Iraq since U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein 13 years ago.
Interior Minister Mohammed Ghabban resigned on Tuesday blaming the attack on a lack of communication between multiple forces in charge of the capital's security.
Islamic State has lost ground since last year to U.S.-backed government forces and Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias in the territory they control in northern and western Iraq but still have the ability to strike the heart of the capital.
Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani on Friday criticized the government's failure to deal effectively with the Islamic State threat.
"Complacency among corrupt and failed (officials) at the expense of the blood and souls of innocents civilians is unbearable and needs to be stopped," he said in his weekly sermon, read on his behalf in the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala, south of Baghdad.
Islamic State has also claimed a triple suicide attack late on Thursday near a Shi'ite mausoleum north of Baghdad, which killed at least 35 people, according to security sources. Baghdad-based security analyst, Hisham al-Hashimi, said the attack made an escalation of sectarian strife highly likely.
Shi'ites form a majority in Iraq but northern and western provinces are mostly Sunni, including Salahuddin where the on the Mausoleum of Sayid Mohammed bin Ali al-Hadi is located.
Prominent Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his militia, the Peace Brigade, to deploy around the mausoleum, near Balad, about 93 km (58 miles) north of Baghdad.
Sadr's militia is also deployed in Samarra, a nearby city that houses the shrine of Imam Ali al-Hadi, the father of Sayid Mohammed whose mausoleum was attacked on Thursday.
A 2006 bombing destroyed the golden dome of that shrine, setting off a wave of sectarian violence.
REUTERS