Two parked cars exploded simultaneously at a bus terminal in the southern Iraqi town of Qurna on Friday morning, killing at least 15 and wounding 20 others, police reported.
The casualty toll was expected to rise, said a Qurna police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to deal with the media.
Qurna is about 100 kilometers north of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, 550 kilometers southeast of Baghdad.
A witness, taxi driver Salim Abdul-Hussein, 35, said the blasts damaged the terminal and many cars and surrounding shops, striking an area crowded each morning with farmers coming to town to shop and sell their produce and sheep, chicken and other animals.
