At least 42 people have been killed and more than 125 wounded after three car bombs exploded in a southern Iraqi city, according to police.

The attacks in Amara on Wednesday came amid tension across oil-producing southern Iraq, where rival Shia factions are struggling for influence.

The bombs exploded along a main street in Amara, the capital of Maysan, a province home to the Marsh Arabs and has large oil fields.

Iraq's Furat Television said two men suspected of involvement in the blasts had been detained.

The police official said "hospitals were stretched to the limit" because of the number of wounded.

Onlookers killed

Most people were killed in the second and third blasts, police said.

 Many onlookers had gathered after the first blast in a parking lot and were killed or wounded when the subsequent car bombs exploded.

 Southern Iraq is witnessing a turf war between rival Shia groups, including supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia, and its chief rival, the powerful Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.

 A year ago, clashes broke out between militiamen and police in Amara, prompting the dispatch of hundreds of Iraqi troops.

 Politicians targeted

 The Maysan attacks came just a day of a suicide car bomber targeted the offices of Iraq's former prime minister and a Sunni parliament member, killing two policemen.

Police and hospital officials said at least 12 people were wounded in addition to the deaths as a result of Tuesday morning's attack in western Baghdad's Hathiya neighborhood.

"All the casualties are policemen. They were part of the security for the leaders staying there," an official said.

The bombing happened less than 150 metres from the offices of Iyad Allawi, the first post-Saddam prime minister, and Saleh al-Mutlaq, leader of the National Dialogue Front.

Neither politician was at their office at the time of the explosion.

'Corpse bomb'

In the Saidiya neighborhood of Baghdad on Tuesday, a bomb hidden in a corpse blew up and killed an Iraqi soldier and wounded seven people, security officials said.

"The soldiers went to collect the corpse which was lying in an open area when the bomb inside it exploded and killed one soldier," an official said.

Also on Tuesday, the US military said American and Iraqi troops detained five men suspected of involvement in the assassination of the police chief in central Iraq's Babil province on Sunday.

Major General Qais al-Mamoori was near Babil's capital Hilla when a roadside bomb struck his convoy.

He was the third top Shia official to be assassinated in four months in provinces south of Baghdad amid intense rivalries between Shia groups.

PHOTO CAPTION

Aftermath of the bombings in the southern Iraqi city of Amara