A spokesman for Polish-led forces in Hilla, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, said 44 Iraqis were injured in the blast. The wounds of the soldiers were not life-threatening.

Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Strzelecki told the news agency 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 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.

The attacks are the latest in a string against soldiers of countries helping the United States occupy Iraq, and highlighted the violence that threatens US plans to formally hand sovereignty over to Iraqis by mid-year.

Those plans -- whose June 30 deadline has been deemed sacred by a US administration mounting its campaign for US presidential elections in November -- have been derailed by calls for elections before the formal transfer of sovereignty, rather than the series of caucuses Washington wanted.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expects to rule this week on the plan, after dispatching a team to Iraq to judge the feasibility of holding direct elections as demanded by the top religious authority for Shia Muslims who make up 60 percent of Iraq's population.

UN DECISION IN DAYS

According to a US plan agreed in November with Iraq's US-appointed Governing Council, regional caucuses would be held to pick a transitional body that would draft a constitution and govern the country until full elections in 2005.

The insistence of Shia cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, on elections before the handover, has led some members of the Council to say the caucus plan is unworkable and that the Council should be handed sovereignty in the absence of a vote.

Others -- including Sunni Arabs who fear a vote would hand power to majority Shias with population numbers and better political organization on their side -- have proposed changing the make-up of the Council, where Shias hold a majority.