"I think it was a bomb," said Iraqi policeman Qasim Mohammed. "The explosion was very loud, and had it been a grenade, it wouldn't have been that powerful."
Mohammed said he believed the explosive device was thrown under the car shortly before it exploded.
The target of the blast was not clear.
Mouwafak al-Rabii, a Shiite member of the governing council and a human rights activist, condemned the explosion.
"These are being carried out by the Taliban of Iraq," he said at the bomb site. It is "a backward ideology. A very regressive ideology, it depicts Islam in a very unacceptable way."
Speaking about US-British occupation, al-Rabii said "nobody wants the US to stay one day longer than what they have to stay." He added that when Iraq has a government, an elected parliament and the security is under control, then "the American and British troops should leave immediately."
In west Baghdad, one US soldier was killed and 10 wounded in an attack.
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