A suicide car bomb killed 22 people and wounded 66 in a market in the Iraqi town of Hilla today.
The explosion in the Shia town, 100 kilometres south of Baghdad, set at least ten cars ablaze.
Elsewhere, at least 17 people were killed and dozens wounded by car bombings in central Baghdad yesterday, most of them in a predominantly Shia district.
The bombings came as envoys from the United States and Iran began a second round of talks in Baghdad on Iraq's worsening security crisis, following up on a landmark meeting in May.
Iranian ambassador Hassan Kazemi-Qomi and his US counterpart, Ryan Crocker, were meeting in the heavily fortified Green Zone in the Iraqi capital, Iraqi officials said. Their talks on May 28th ended a diplomatic freeze between the two nations that had lasted almost three decades.
Washington accuses Shia Muslim Iran of fomenting violence in Iraq. Iran denies the charge and blames the US-led invasion in 2003 for the bloodshed between Iraq's majority Shia and minority Sunni Arabs.
The United States has been leading diplomatic efforts to isolate Iran over its nuclear ambitions, but both sides have stressed that the talks in Baghdad will focus solely on the violence in Iraq.