In the northern city of Mosul, three men in a taxi blew up their vehicle near the mayor's office, witnesses said. The U.S. military said at least nine Iraqis were killed and 25 wounded.

Some bodies were charred beyond recognition.

An hour earlier, a car bomb exploded outside a U.S. base in the town of Baquba, 40 miles north of Baghdad, killing four Iraqis and a U.S. soldier. Eleven Iraqis were wounded.

U.S. officials say they expect a surge of guerrilla attacks ahead of the formal handover of sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June 30. Discussions at the Security Council on a resolution endorsing the political process have been complicated by international wrangling and by divisions within Iraq.

At least six soldiers, including two from Poland, three from Slovakia and one from Latvia were killed in a blast yesterday during a demining operation south of the capital Baghdad, military authorities and diplomats said.

"The incident took place during a demining operation," Colonel Zdzislaw Gnatowski, a spokesman for the Polish army, told AFP.

"The accident happened in an old munitions depot dating back to the Saddam Hussein era," Gnatowski said.

The latest bombings came one day after Iraq's new prime minister announced an agreement by nine political parties to dissolve their militias, integrating some of the 100,000 fighters into the army and police and pensioning off the rest to firm up government control ahead of the transfer of sovereignty.

The plan does not cover the most important militia fighting coalition forces the al-Mahdi Army of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr or smaller groups that have sprouted across the country since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003.

Under the interim constitution adopted in March, armed groups outside government control will be banned as of June 30 when power transfers from the US-run occupation authority to the new interim administration.

Coalition officials said the agreement announced Monday makes the ban effective immediately.

Some of the nine militias have effectively dissolved already, and others, notably two Kurdish groups, have been allied with the Americans for years.

US officials want to disband the al-Mahdi Army and arrest al-Sadr for the April 2003 murder of a rival cleric, although authorities have deferred both goals to reduce tensions in the Shia heartland south of Baghdad. Instead, the coalition has opted to let Allawi, himself a Shia, and Shia clerics deal with al-Sadr.

The agreement also does not cover the brigade organised by the US Marines to take control of the Sunni city of Fallujah after the end of the three-week siege in April. US officials described the Fallujah brigade as "a special auxiliary unit" under the nominal control of the Marines.

(Reuters, AP and AFP)