A suicide car bomber killed 18 people near a hospital south of Baghdad today in the second such attack in as many days.
The attacks come as violence surged after Iraq's election and ahead of a big Shi'ite religious festival.
The bomber drove his vehicle towards local government offices and a hospital in the town of Musayyib, southwest of Baghdad, but detonated it outside blast walls protecting the buildings and killed civilians in the street, local police said.
Around 25 people were wounded, doctors and police said, and US troops quickly moved in to seal off the area.
Elsewhere in Iraq today, i n Baiji, west of Kirkuk, a roadside blast killed two Iraqi policemen and a civilian, a police source said, while a car bomb killed a woman and wounded six people in eastern Baghdad. In Baquba, north of the capital, a police lieutenant was shot dead whilst sitting in a shop.
Violence has intensified after a brief lull following landmark elections that were held nearly two weeks ago but whose final results have yet to be declared.
Two attacks yesterday targeted Shi'ite Muslims and appeared designed to fuel sectarian tension ahead of the Shi'ite festival of Ashura that climaxes next weekend. Most of Iraq's insurgents are thought to be Sunni Muslims.
In those attacks, a suicide bomber killed at least 13 people and wounded more than 40 outside a mosque in a town northeast of Baghdad and gunmen killed nine people at a bakery in Baghdad.
Violence also erupted today in the southern city of Basra, where masked gunmen assassinated a senior judge as he drove to work. It was the city's second assassination in a week and the latest in a string of targeted killings to scar the country.
Last week gunmen killed a correspondent for al-Hurra, a US-funded Iraqi television network, as he was leaving his house. His three-year-old son was also killed.
Gunmen have repeatedly targeted justice officials over the past year, with several judges and employees of the justice ministry killed in drive-by shootings and assassinations.
The shootings appear to be part of attempts to disrupt Iraq's criminal justice system as it struggles to regain its footing following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.