At least 27 Iraqis have been killed in separate bombing attacks in or close to Bagdad and up to 40 others were injured.
A roadside bomb killed 14 Iraqis travelling by bus to Baghdad and 12 were wounded, Dr Abbas Wissan al-Shamari said.
And a further 13 Iraqis were killed and 30 wounded when rockets or mortar bombs slammed into a busy market in a Shi'ite suburb of Baghdad, witnesses and hospital sources said.
Witnesses said at least two projectiles hit the chicken market in the Ourfalli neighbourhood of Sadr City, powerbase of Moqtada al-Sadr, a Shi'ite Muslim cleric who is wanted by the US occupation forces.
"We were standing talking when two rockets landed," Bassam Abdul Rahim, said. "The second hit a gas canister and the explosion was huge. There was blood and bodies everywhere."
Angry residents held up bloodied human remains to television cameras filming the scene, accusing US helicopters of firing missiles at the market.
A dead donkey lay on the road, its guts spilled. Local residents put a sign on its back saying "This is Bush".
The US military, often blamed for attacks in the fervently anti-American neighbourhood, said it had no immediate information about the attack or who fired the projectiles.
At the Shaheed al-Sadr Hospital nearby, relatives of the dead and wounded sat on the ground weeping.
"This Bush, we don't want him," one woman cried. "It wasn't like this under Saddam Hussein. Inside the wards, the wounded lay in pain. One man had lost half his jaw, his face held together by a crude bandage.