US planes have fired at rebel positions in the eastern Baghdad Shia slum of Sadr City, residents and doctors said. The US military said it had no word on those attacks.
A doctor at one Sadr City hospital said an overnight air strike had killed one woman and two men.
"There are 40 wounded people in the hospital now," the doctor said. Three more were in critical condition and had been moved to other hospitals.
Sadr City, a rebel stronghold, has been the scene of almost daily clashes between US forces and insurgents.
US aircraft have also being bombing the rebel stronghold of Falluja for in a concerted effort to hit militants loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The air strike was aimed at about 10 suspected militants meeting in the city center to plan operations, the US military said. Eight people were killed and 17 wounded, Dr Anas Ahmed, a doctor at a nearby hospital, said.
The latest in what the military calls "precision strikes" raised the death toll for the series to 15 killed and 30 wounded, among them women and children, doctors said.
Zarqawi's group, Tawhid and Jihad, has claimed many of the car bombings and attacks in Iraq over the past year, including kidnappings in which several hostages have been beheaded.
Meanwhile, a car bomb killed three Iraqi National Guards and wounded five others in the northern city of Mosul today.
In fresh attacks against Iraq's security forces, insurgents detonated the bomb near a National Guard patrol in Mosul, 390 km north of Baghdad. Three civilians were also wounded.
Earlier today, insurgents fired five mortar bombs near a police academy in eastern Baghdad, but there were no reports of any casualties or damage, the Interior Ministry said.
The attacks came a day after US Secretary of State Colin Powell's warning, which linked the growing militancy to elections scheduled in Iraq for January.
"We are fighting an intense insurgency," he said on ABC's "This Week" programme. "Yes it's getting worse, and the reason it's getting worse is that they are determined to disrupt the election."
Agencies