Medics at Kindi hospital said they had received the bodies of 12 dead, three of them women, along with 76 wounded, including 10 women. Another three dead and eight wounded, three of them women, were taken to Ibn-Anafees hospital.

An interior ministry official earlier put the initial toll at 12 dead and 55 wounded. The blast, in a busy mixed neighbourhood, was caused by a suicide bomber, he said Thursday.

At least eight cars and a bus were caught in the blast at 10:55 am (0655 GMT), while a number of storefronts were blown in and stalls operated by street vendors were sent flying.

Twisted bodies in ripped clothes were wheeled away in street peddlers' carts by residents as thick black smoke billowed into the sky.

Hysterical residents wailed and threw their arms up in the air as medics and police extracted charred bodies from the bus.

US forces who arrived at the scene after the blast fired rounds into the air to disperse the crowd while bystanders threw stones at them, witnesses said.

"There was no sign of a police presence or US patrols at the time of the explosion," said 32-year-old mechanic Anwar Ibrahim, who witnessed the blast but escaped unhurt.

Apartments had their windows blown in and roofs damaged.

Baghdad and other Iraqi cities have been hit by relentless car bomb and suicide attacks in recent days.

On Wednesday, 76 people died in a string of bomb attacks across the country, the largest of which killed 38 in the northern Sunni town of Tikrit.