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The outburst of rage came after a suicide car bomber crashed into a convoy of three sport utility vehicles carrying Westerners earlier Monday. According to The Associated Press, at least 13 people, including three General Electric workers and two bodyguards, were killed. U.S. officials said 62 people were injured, including 10 foreign contractors. Hospital officials said many of the wounded had lost limbs.

Iraq's interior minister told the AP that he believed foreigners carried out the attack, and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi accused Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi of trying to disrupt the transfer of sovereignty. Al-Zarqawi, believed to have contacts with al-Qaida, is accused in last month's decapitation of American Nicholas Berg.

Al-Zarqawi has purportedly written to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, saying his fighters are being squeezed by U.S.-led coalition troops, according to a statement posted Monday on Islamic Web sites.

It was not possible to authenticate the statement, according to the AP. "The space of movement is starting to get smaller," it said. "The grip is starting to be tightened on the holy warriors' necks and, with the spread of soldiers and police, the future is becoming frightening." The statement says the militant movement in Iraq is racing against time to form battalions that can take control of the country "four months before the formation of the promised Iraqi government, hoping to spoil their plan." It appears to refer to the government that would take office after the elections scheduled for January 2005.

It also says insurgents are planning to intensify attacks on Iraqi soldiers and police, seen as collaborators with the U.S.-led coalition. Calling Iraqi forces "the occupier's eye, ear and hand," the statement says: "We are planning on targeting them heavily in the coming stage before they are fully in control."

The dead from Monday's attacks included three employees of Granite Services Inc., a wholly owned, Tampa, Fla.-based subsidiary of General Electric Co., and two security contractors employed by Olive Security of London. The Westerners included one American, two Britons, one Frenchman and one victim of undetermined nationality, officials told the AP.

The foreign victims were helping to rebuild power plants, Allawi said.

The blast, during the morning rush hour near busy Tahrir Square, was the second vehicle bombing in Baghdad in as many days amid an upsurge of bloodshed in the capital only two weeks before the formal end of the U.S.-led occupation.

The attack was the latest in a series directed against Iraq's infrastructure or those seeking to rebuild it after decades of war, international sanctions and Saddam Hussein's tyranny.

GE said Monday it has no plans to pull its workers out of the country.

"We remain committed to the reconstruction of Iraq," said GE spokeswoman Louise Binns.

Nevertheless, the bombing dramatizes the dangerous challenge the United States faces as it struggles to revive the country's power supply and show Iraqis the occupation can improve their lives.

A policeman, Ghahtan Abood, said the bomb went off when a vehicle rammed the contractors' three-vehicle convoy as it sped down the street. However, coalition officials said they were unsure of the account and that the bomb may have been planted along the street and detonated as the convoy passed.

The front of a two-story building that contained shops and apartments was left in rubble, and at least seven cars were charred and blasted by shrapnel.

There have been at least 15 car bombings in Iraq so far this month. And while such bombings once commonly targeted buildings such as U.S. military bases and Iraqi police stations, recently there have been several kamikazelike strikes at convoys of Iraqi police, Western contractors and coalition soldiers.

The scene in Baghdad suggested that popular revulsion against the U.S. occupation and the government is growing. The rioting in Baghdad's Tahrir Square lasted for hours.

By noon, the area had been secured by swarms of Humvees, tanks and a long row of American soldiers wearing riot gear and carrying shields.

A group of men danced around a dead man pulled from one of the vehicles. People grabbed some beer and poured it over the body. A man waved what looked like a British passport in the air, laughing and pumping his fist.

Hospitals were crammed with the wounded and dying.

In other violence Monday, a roadside bomb struck an Army convoy of 20-vehicles about three miles north of Fallujah, witnesses said. It could not be immediately determined if there were any casualties.

Near the town of Salman Pak southeast of Baghdad, police said a car bomb exploded between police vehicles, killing four people and wounding four. The report could not be independently confirmed.

In Mosul, four members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps were wounded when a bomb exploded as they were patrolling near a U.S. base.

In Kut, authorities said attackers hurled two grenades at an American patrol. One Iraqi on a motorcycle was wounded in the crossfire, witnesses said.