Three consecutive explosions shattered the centre of the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Sunday afternoon, the correspondent of the Russian agency RIA Novosti reported.

No further details were immediately available.

A hand-made explosive device went off near a hotel in the centre of Baghdad earlier on Sunday after a U.S. military convoy passed by. No casualties have been reported. AFP cited an American soldier as saying that the bomb was hidden in a junk-heap off the road and exploded at about 10.30 a.m. local time.

A day earlier two American soldiers and three Iraqis were killed in separate bomb attacks.

The American soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack on their convoy near the volatile town of Falluja, a city 50 miles west of Baghdad.

In another attack, a truck bomb exploded soon after a U.S. patrol passed by in the volatile town of Samarra, about 100 km (62 miles) north of Baghdad. The blast killed three Iraqis and wounded 40 people including seven American soldiers, Capt. Jennifer Knight of the 720th Military Police Battalion said.

Samarra lies within the so-called Sunni triangle -- an area north and west of the capital -- where insurgents have waged frequent attacks on civilians and U.S. forces.

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