The Trade Bank of Iraq is in a commercial area surrounding Nisoor Square that includes a government agency that issues national identification cards and the telephone exchange building. Established after the 2003 US-led invasion, the bank is at the forefront of efforts to attract foreign investment.

People walk past blast site in Baghdad, capital of Iraq, June 20, 2010. At least 33 people were killed and 54 were wounded in two car bomb explosions in western Baghdad on Sunday.[Xinhua]

Bank chairman Hussein al-Uzri said five guards were among the dead and six others were wounded. He blamed the attack on insurgents trying to undermine Iraq's progress and promised they would fail.

"The work of building Iraq's economic strength ... goes on uninterrupted, as does the work of the bank, which will be open for business tomorrow," he said in a statement Sunday.

In other violence, police and morgue officials said the decomposed bodies of six women and a man were found buried in the backyard of a deserted house in the religiously mixed Zayouna neighborhood in eastern Baghdad. The seven victims apparently were killed two to three months ago, the officials said.

Iraqi women are frequently killed by religious extremists who accuse them of behavior deemed un-Islamic.

Two people were killed in a roadside bombing targeting the convoy of the police chief in Duluiyah, a former insurgent stronghold north of Baghdad, although the police chief was not harmed.

Hospital officials also said a man wounded after police opened fire at a protest over power cuts in the southern oil hub of Basra had died, raising the number of demonstrators killed to two. The violence Saturday highlighted growing public anger over a lack of basic services in Iraq.

The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information to the media.

Al-Maliki has dispatched a team to Basra to address the problem.

Political rival Allawi called the protest a spontaneous outpouring of discontent and called for restraint from Iraqi security forces in a televised speech broadcast on the private Al-Sharqiyah TV station.

"Regretfully what happened formed a black mark in the march of Iraq toward prosperity and development as well construction and stability," he said.