Suicide car bombers killed at least 11 Iraqis and wounded 58 foreign troops on Wednesday in twin attacks on a military base south of Baghdad in the run up to a UN report on the feasibility of direct elections in Iraq.
A spokesman for Polish-led forces in Hilla, about 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad, said 44 Iraqis were also wounded in the blasts. The wounds of the soldiers were not life-threatening.
Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Strzelecki told Reuters that guards outside the base managed to stop one of the cars by shooting at it but that a second car exploded after smashing into a wall.
"At 7:15 local time (0415 GMT) near the logistics base there was a terrorist attack using two cars," Strzelecki said. "We found the bodies of the two drivers, and two Iraqis standing in the street were killed."
US-led Coalition Provisional Authority spokeswoman Hilary White later put the death toll much higher. "We can confirm that more than 11 Iraqis were killed," she told Reuters. "It killed men, women and children."
The blasts blew the facing and roofs off of homes outside the base, and, like car bombs last week that killed about 100 people as they enlisted in the Iraqi army and police, left survivors blaming Iraq's US occupiers for the bloodshed.
"We heard the sound of a plane overhead and a rocket landed and then a second rocket landed," said Omar Zayed, 17, who lives near the site of the explosion.
Two young boys who were wounded in the explosion lost their parents. One of them, 10-year-old Seif Saleh, lay in a hospital bed complaining of pain and asking for his father as the coffins of his parents were brought into the hospital.
Relatives of one of the dead wept hysterically on the corridor floor and beat their hands on the wall.
The wounded foreigners included at least 12 Filipinos, 10 Hungarians, 10 Poles and two Americans.
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