A car bomb has exploded in the town of Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, leaving many killed and wounded, according to the local hospital director.
"There were many dead and wounded," said Dr Daud al-Tai, head of the hospital in Latifiya, a town near Mahmudiya.
The doctor said he did not keep track of the casualties because many were taken to Baghdad.
The powerful blast ripped the Husainiya district, where there are numerous stores and homes, late on Wednesday.
"Columns of smoke shot up in the sky after the blast, which destroyed at least four homes and 20 shops," one resident said.
Both Mahmudiya and Latifiya fall within a belt of towns south of Baghdad with a high rate of kidnappings and shootings and referred to by US soldiers as the "triangle of death".
Checkpoint bombing
In the same area, Aljazeera learnt that a human bomber blew up his car at a joint checkpoint manned by US forces and the Iraqi national guards, in al-Latifiya killing nine people.
Thirteen more were wounded in the attack on Wednesday.
An Iraqi National Guardsman said the attacker drove his vehicle at high speed into the checkpoint, on the northeastern entrance to the town. The blast destroyed around five civilian cars.
Violence is not abating ahead of elections due in JanuaryIn a separate incident, a US Humvee vehicle was destroyed when an explosive device targeting a US military patrol detonated in the same area.
North of the capital, four Iraqi civilians were killed in two incidents in the northern Iraqi city of Samarra on Friday, the latest casualties of fighting between insurgents and US forces, police said.
A mortar round, apparently intended for a US base, hit a house and killed a man and his child inside, Major Sadun Ahmad said.
Another man and a child died in shooting that followed a roadside bomb attack on a US patrol. Two civilians were hurt.
Anti-American insurgents remain active in Samarra despite an assault by US forces in October.
Elsewhere, five Iraqis from one family were killed and two others injured when an explosive device, planted on a road in the Abu Ghraib area west of Baghdad, blew up their car as they drove over it, medical sources at Abu Ghraib hospital told Aljazeera.
Mosul attack
Meanwhile, the Tuesday attack on a US Army canteen in Mosul, northern Iraq, that killed 13 American soldiers appears to have been the work of a human bomber, the chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, said on Wednesday.
"At this point, it looks like it was an improvised explosive device worn by an attacker," Myers told reporters at the Pentagon.
"We have had a suicide bomber apparently strap something to his body ... and go into a dining hall"General Richard Myers,US Joint Chiefs of Staff"We have had a suicide bomber apparently strap something to his body ... and go into a dining hall," he said.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said investigators who were rushed to the base reached that conclusion following the Tuesday strike which killed a total of 22 people in the large canteen tent.
Myers said that the military would now investigate security at the base and how an attacker was able to gain access.
"He made his way on to the base, someone who was a trusted individual," Myers said.
"The base is not unsecure," he said, but, "somehow he had to get on the base with an explosive, with bombs. We'll find that out when the investigation is complete exactly how that happened."
Aljazeera + Agencies