A suicide bomber drove his car alongside American soldiers handing out sweets to children in Baghdad this morning and detonated the vehicle, killing as many as 24 people, most of them children.

The US military said one soldier had died and at least seven Iraqi childen had been killed in the explosion. Iraqi officials put the death toll at 24. Three soldiers and 18 other passers-by were wounded in the attack.

A US military statement said that bomber approached the troops in a neighbourhood in the east of the city when the vehicle, laden with explosives, drove up to a Humvee armoured personnel carrier before detonating.

"Many Iraqi civilians, mostly children, were around the Humvee at the time of the blast," said the statement, which added that the explosion set a nearby building on fire.

Iraqi police said that 24 people were killed and 18 wounded in the attack. Lieutenant Ali Abbas said that 19 bodies, including 11 children, were brought to al-Kindi Hospital.

An witness who lives in the neighbourhood said that the children ran up to the American patrol when the soldiers started to hand out sweets.

"Children started running behind it when the explosion occurred," said Abbas Ali Jassim. "They (the soldiers) were not affected as much as the people. The explosion was mainly on the children."

Reports described the ruined remains of an engine block wrapped in barbed wire in the street and a child's bicycle lying surrounded by pools of blood.

Last September, 35 Iraqi children were killed in a coordinated attack on US soldiers as they handed out sweets at a celebration to open a sewage plant in the west of Baghdad. American forces were criticised for making children targets by offering them sweets.

Today's explosion comes the day after General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told US television that a senior lieutenant of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been captured in Baghdad.

In a separate incident reported yesterday, up to 10 Sunni Arabs suspected of sympathising with the insurgency were said to have suffocated when Iraqi police locked them in a van.

The nine or ten Sunni men had been arrested by Interior Ministry police after an Iraqi patrol came under attack on Sunday in the west of Baghdad. The suspects were then locked in a lorry for several hours, as temperatures outside rose to 45C (113F).

Major General Hussein Kamal, the head of the intelligence department at the Interior Ministry, said that the men appeared "to have died after the vehicle’s engine was turned off stopping the air conditioning." General Kamal said those responsible would face charges.

The deaths have aggravated the tension between the Shia-dominated government and the Iraq's minority Sunni population, which is seen as supplying many of the insurgents fighting the US-led occupation and the country's new security forces.

According to Reuters, the latest Pentagon figures show that 1,756 American soldiers and 89 British servicemen have died in Iraq. As many as 25,000 civilians are believed to have died since the US-led invasion in March 2003, although there is no official estimate.

Explore World News

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• The Afghan grave that began decades of war
• Berlin hails Hitler 'assassin'
• Science thinks big for better IVF