BAGHDAD/KIRKUK, June 14: At least 22 people were killed and more than 60 injured in different acts of violence in several parts of Iraq on Monday.

A powerful suicide car bomb killed at least 16 people, including five foreign contractors, and wounded more than 60 when it ripped through a busy Baghdad street in a targeted attack on a convoy while five Kurdish recruits to the new Iraqi army were shot dead and their bodies burnt in Samarra.

Amid the rumbling violence, British Defence Secretary Geoffrey Hoon began a surprise 24-hour trip to the southern city of Basra, where most of Britain's 8,530 troops in Iraq are deployed.

The Baghdad explosion - the second major blast in 24 hours - brought down part of a building and destroyed a row of shops, including a liquor store, in crowded Sadoun Street on the east bank of the Tigris river.

At least seven Iraqis died in a suicide car bomb near a US-led coalition base in the capital on Sunday. Some 30 minutes after the early Monday attack, a civilian contractor was killed when a roadside bomb exploded and gunfire hit a coalition convoy in eastern Baghdad.

US and Iraqi officials have warned of an upsurge in violence ahead of the June 30 handover of sovereignty in Iraq, now barely two weeks away. The Sadoun Street blast targeted passing four-wheel-drive vehicles of the type favoured the US-led coalition.

A US military spokeswoman said five foreign security contractors, including two British, one French and one American, were killed. -AFP