At least 20 people were killed when a car bomb exploded outside a local governor's house in central Iraq on Tuesday, officials said.
The attack occurred in Diwaniya city, about 95 miles south of Baghdad.
"A car bomb targeted one of the entrances to the governor's house," Fadhel Mawat, a spokesman for the provincial council said.
A source at a hospital in Diwaniya said at least 20 people had been killed and more than 30 wounded in the attack.
Kareem Isghair, the head of the security committee of Diwaniya Provincial Council, said explosions targeted security personal as they were checking in for morning duty.
Bombings and killings in Iraq have fallen sharply since the height of sectarian violence in 2006-2007, but a stubborn Sunni Islamist insurgency linked to al-Qaida and rival Shiite militias still carry out daily attacks.
Violence has increasingly targeted local security forces and provincial government officials as U.S. troops prepare to withdraw from the country by a planned year-end deadline more than eight years after the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein.
Diwaniya is a poor, mainly Shiite region and several of Iraq's armed groups are active in the area.