Twelve of the dead were 13 or younger and six were between 14 and 17, said police Lieutenant Mohammed Jassim Jabr. Among the wounded was 4-day-old Miriam Jabber, cut slightly by flying glass and debris.
''There were some American troops blocking the highway when a US Humvee came near a gathering of children," said Karim Shukir, 42. The troops began handing out candy and smiley-face key chains. ''Suddenly, a speeding car bomb . . . struck both the Humvee and the children."
The slaughter of so many Shi'ite children is likely to raise tensions further between the majority Shi'ites, who dominate the government, and the minority Sunni Arabs, the foundation of the insurgency.
In Washington, the new US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, warned that both foreign terrorists and Iraqi insurgents linked to Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party were trying to foment civil war.
''The foreign terrorists . . . see the Iraqi people, including Iraqi children, as cannon fodder to be sacrificed in the pursuit of an extremist agenda of conflict between civilizations," Khalilzad told reporters. ''Hard-line Ba'athists want a civil war as a vehicle to restore their dictatorship, and if they cannot win power, to take Iraq down with them."
At Kindi hospital, where many victims were taken, a distraught mother swathed in black sat cross-legged outside the operating room. ''May God curse the mujahedeen and their leader," she cried, referring to the insurgents as she pounded her head with her fists in grief.
''The car bomber made a deliberate decision to attack one of our vehicles as the soldiers were engaged in a peaceful operation with Iraqi citizens," said Major Russ Goemaere, a Task Force Baghdad spokesman.
''The terrorist undoubtedly saw the children," Goemaere said, calling the attack ''absolutely abhorrent."
After the bombing, charred remains of an engine block wrapped in barbed wire sat on the road. US and Iraqi troops broadcast messages by loudspeakers in Arabic, warning civilians not to approach military vehicles.
In Washington, White House press secretary Scott McClellan strongly condemned the bombing, saying it showed insurgents ''have no regard for innocent, human life whether it's men, women, or children."
