The blast also wounded 17 people, the official said. Local health officials put the death toll at 27. They also said a woman and child were among the wounded.

Baquba is the capital of the Diyala province northeast of Baghdad.

Earlier, two deadly car bombs exploded in Iraq on Sunday. Six civilians were killed and 25 others wounded when a car bomb exploded near a bus stop in Kirkuk, local police said. The bomb detonated about 2:45 p.m. local time in al-Iskan, a commercial area of the northern Iraqi city.

The oil-rich city of Kirkuk is ethnically diverse, with large populations of Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen jockeying for power.

About 150 miles (240 kilometres) south, in the capital, a car bomb went off in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite Kadhimiya district, killing two civilians and wounding 10 others, an Interior Ministry official said.

Meanwhile, the US Army handed over responsibility for the security of the Karbala province to the Iraqi military in a ceremony on Monday morning.

Karbala, a Shiite province south of Baghdad, will be the eighth of 18 Iraqi provinces to be handed over to the Iraqi government by coalition forces. The provinces previously returned to Iraqi control were Najaf, Muthanna, Dhi Qar, Maysan, Duhok, Erbil and Sulaymaniyah.