American military vehicles entering a quiet residential neighbourhood of Baghdad on Wednesday morning in an effort to thwart a roadside bombing instead attracted an attack by a suicide car bomber that killed at least 24 civilians, most of them children.

The apparent ambush, shortly before 11am at a highway turnoff into the Naqariya and Alif Dar neighbourhoods near the eastern edge of Baghdad, wounded three US soldiers, one of whom died soon after, the US military said.