The woman blew herself up at a checkpoint as pilgrims commemorating the Muharram ceremonies converged on the mausoleum of Iman Mousa al-Kadhim, the most important religious site in Baghdad for Shiite Muslims, officials said.

"A woman wearing an explosive belt blew herself up near one of the gates of the shrine," Major General Qassim Atta, who is Iraqi spokesman for security operations in Baghdad, told AFP.

"According to our first preliminary report 35 were killed and 65 injured. Most of them were Iranian pilgrims and women and children," said Atta. He described the force of the blast as "very big."

An interior ministry official put the death toll at 40, including 17 Iranian pilgrims. The US military said it was aware of the bombing but was awaiting a casualty report.

Police cordoned off the site and moved quickly to clean up the blood stained street that was littered with broken glass and debris from the adjacent shops, a policeman told an AFP journalist, who was prevented from entering the immediate area.

Sunday's attack came at about 11am (0800 GMT) as pilgrims, many of them Iranians, took part in the procession related to the Muharram ceremonies that climax on Ashura, which this year falls on January 7.

The commemoration mourns the killing of Imam Hussein by armies of the Sunni caliph Yazid in the year 680 and Shiite Muslim pilgrims from around the Middle East throng to Iraq to visit the nation's holy sites.

Despite the chaos following the bombing, pilgrims continued to converge on the shrine as they carried out ritualistic wailing and devotional self-flagellation with chains.

In the past, such ceremonies have been the target of attacks by Sunni insurgents.

At the height of sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007 bridges that connected the Shiite neighbourhood of Kazamiyah with the Sunni district of Azamiyah were kept closed. Today the main bridge, known as "the bridge of the imams", is open.

Azamiyah has long been controlled by Sunni insurgent groups and Al Qaeda, while Kazamiyah was under the sway of extremist Shiite militiamen of the Mahdi Army.

Sunday's attack was the deadliest in Iraq since December 11 when at least 55 people were killed and 95 wounded in a suicide bombing at a restaurant outside the northern city of Kirkuk.

The latest attack also came just two days after a male suicide bomber killed at least 23 people and wounded 72 at a tribal meeting just south of Baghdad

Suicide bombings in particular are a hallmark of insurgents linked to the Al-Qaeda network.

The latest bombing is likely to raise concerns about the ability of Iraqi forces to maintain security in the capital after the United States handed back part of the security brief to Iraq forces on January 1, as mandated by United Nations.

Attacks of all types have been sharply down across Iraq in recent months according to US commanders, who recognise however that insurgents appear able still to strike throughout the country and that with provincial elections scheduled for January 31, an increase in violence is likely.

At a ceremony in the Green Zone to commemorate the 88th anniversary of the Iraqi army, government officials pledged that the nation's security forces were nevertheless up to the task of defending the country.

"This day shows that we are going in the right direction and we have the abilities to take care of our security issues," Iraqi Defence Minister Abdel Qader Jassem Mohammed told AFP after the event.

"We are ready to take over the security issue at the end of 2011," he said.

Under the terms of a deal signed with Washington in November, the United States handed over several security files to Iraq on January 1 and three years from now is due to withdraw entirely from the country it invaded in 2003.

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