More than 50 Iraqis have been killed in attacks, including 30 in a car bomb attack on a hospital, as violence picked up in the run-up to the 15 December general elections.

The bloodiest attack took place on Thursday in Mahmudiyah, some 20km south of the capital, where a suicide bomber attempted to ram a booby-trapped car into a hospital compound.

Thirty people died and 27 were wounded, including four US soldiers, security sources said.

The US military reported the deaths of two servicemen in a roadside bombing on Thursday southwest of Baghdad, while four American soldiers were killed in a series of incidents on Wednesday.

The latest deaths, reported as Americans celebrated Thanksgiving, brought to at least 2110 the number of US military personnel killed since the March 2003 invasion, according to the Pentagon.

A second car bomb blew up on Thursday evening in a busy shopping district of Hilla, 120km (75 miles) south of the capital, killing three people and wounding 13, hospital officials said.

In other violence, at least 10 Iraqis were shot dead in a series of attacks in Baghdad, including two children, six policemen, one army officer and an advisor to former prime minister Ayad Allawi.

Near Baiji, north central Iraq, two Iraqi soldiers were killed and seven wounded by a roadside bomb, while further north, near Hawijah, five people were shot dead, three of them soldiers, when gunmen opened fire on an army vehicle.

Authorities also found the bodies of two men and two women, strangled or shot dead, in Yussufiyah, on the southern outskirts of the capital.

The latest unrest comes just three weeks ahead of elections for a four-year parliament, the final stage in Iraq's transition to democracy since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.

PHOTO CAPTION

People gather around the site of a car bomb outside the hospital in Mahmoudiya, Iraq, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2005. (AP)