A bomb killed 11 people and wounded 23 in the Shia Sadr City neighbourhood of the Iraqi capital Baghdad on today, hospital sources said.
A man stands next to a relative who was wounded in a bomb attack in a Baghdad's Sadr City today.
Elsewhere, embattled Prime Minister Nouri Maliki met behind closed-doors with Iraq's top Shia cleric in Najaf to brief him over efforts to fill Cabinet jobs vacated when ministers from the largest Sunni Arab bloc and the movement of radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr pulled out to protest the prime minister's policies.
The attack in Sadr City was one of the deadliest in Baghdad in weeks, following a reduction in violent incidents across the country that US commanders attribute to a troop build-up ordered by US President George W. Bush earlier this year.
Iraqi police said the bomb exploded at a square where minibuses gather to pick up and drop off passengers. At least five buses were set on fire.
It was not immediately clear who was responsible, but the blast came on the fringes of Sadr City, al-Sadr's stronghold. Al- Sadr last week declared a six-month "freeze" on his Mehdi Army militia's operations but warned he could reactivate it at any time if he thought necessary. The announcement came after clashes in the Shia city of Karbala between Mehdi Army forces and a rival Shia militia.
Ms Bush, on an unannounced visit to Iraq on Monday, said security had improved in Iraq and raised the prospect of US troop cuts if the trend continued.
The US military said today three US soldiers were killed and two were injured in eastern Baghdad yesterday by a roadside armour-piercing bomb of a type which it says Iran is supplying to Shia militias in Iraq.
Explosively formed penetrators (EFP), have killed scores of American soldiers in and around Baghdad as thousands of troops have been deployed in operations to crack down on Sunni Arab insurgents and Shia militias. Iran denies training or supplying weapons to the militias.
Separately, the military also announced the death of a fourth soldier who was killed yesterday in western Baghdad. Two soldiers were wounded in that attack.
The deaths bring to 3,746 the number of US soldiers killed since the start of the US-led invasion in 2003. Five soldiers have died so far this month.
In a pre-dawn raid in Karbala today, US forces captured an Iraqi believed to be working as the local contact to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps's elite Quds Force to supply Shia militias with Iranian-made weapons