A suicide bomber killed 10 people in Baghdad today as US Defence Secretary Robert Gates made an announced visit to the country.
Police said that despite a security crackdown the bomber was able to ram his car into a fuel tanker in the religiously mixed neighbourhood of Jadriya, wounding 21 people.
The killings come less than 24 hours after militants killed almost 200 in the capital's bloodiest day since the 2003 US-led invasion.
Mr Gates arrived in Baghdad today planning to urge Iraq's political leaders to speed up reconciliation efforts. "Frankly I would like to see faster progress," he told told reporters before leaving Tel Aviv for Baghdad.
"The Iraqis have to know . . . that this isn't an open-ended commitment," Mr Gates said, appearing to refer to Washington's continued troop presence in Iraq.
The visit is his third to Iraq since taking over as defence secretary but his first since President Bush's decision to send an extra 30,000 troops under a security plan seen as the last-ditch attempt to avert the country's slide into civil war.
Suspected Sunni al-Qaeda militants detonated a string of bombs in mostly Shia areas of Baghdad yesterday.
In the worst attack, 140 people were killed in a truck bombing in the Sadriya neighbourhood. In Sadriya, residents condemned the Shia government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for failing to protect them.
Meanwhile a roadside bomb killed two British soldiers in the southern Iraqi province of Maysan today, the British military said, a day after British forces handed over the region to Iraqi security control.
British military spokesman Major David Gell said three soldiers had also been wounded in the blast northwest of Amara, the capital of Maysan.
The deaths brought to 144 the number of British soldiers killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003. April has been a particularly bloody month for British forces, with 10 soldiers killed so far.