A car blew up in a busy northern Baghdad neighbourhood today killing at least five people and wounding more than 35, police and hospital officials said.
A small explosion occurred shortly after a US military convoy passed, wounding a woman passer-by, witnesses said.
As a crowd of people rushed to help her, a second, more powerful explosion went off, causing much worse casualties.
A doctor at al-Namun hospital in the Aadhimiya district where the blast occurred, said five people were killed and 37 wounded in the attack.
Police said the road was packed with pedestrians and workers when the explosion went off at mid-morning.
In a separate incident in a western district of Baghdad, one Iraqi was killed when a small roadside bomb went off as a US military convoy was passing. The military said it suffered no casualties in the attack.
A series of car bombs have detonated in Baghdad in recent days, in the build-up to yesterday's naming of a government to take over from the US-led authorities on June 30th.
Yesterday, a suspected car bomb blew up outside the offices of a Kurdish political party in central Baghdad, killing at least three people and wounding 20. Another car bomb attack north of Baghdad killed at least 11 Iraqis.
Last month the head of the Iraqi Governing Council was killed in car bomb blast at an entrance to the headquarters of the US-led administration in Baghdad, known as the Green Zone.