BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's Shiite vice president escaped an apparent assassination attempt Monday after a bomb exploded in municipal offices where he was making a speech, knocking him down with the force of the blast that left at least 10 people dead.

Adel Abdul-Mahdi was bruised and hospitalized for medical exams, an aide said. Police initially blamed the attack on a bomb-rigged car, but later said the explosives were apparently planted inside the building.

The attack sent another message that suspected Sunni militants could strike anywhere despite a major security crackdown across the capital.

Iraqis also looked to neighboring Jordan for news of their president, Jalal Talabani, who was being treated after falling unconscious Sunday. His son, Qubad Talabani, said the 73-year-old leader was "up and about" and blamed the episode on fatigue and exhaustion.

The Iraqi ambassador to Jordan said Talabani, a Kurd, was stable at an Amman hospital. "There's nothing dangerous about his case," Saad al-Hayyani told The Associated Press.

The bomb struck while Abdul-Mahdi was addressing municipal officials in the upscale Mansour district, which has many embassies and saw a rise in private security patrols after past kidnappings blamed on militants.

Abdul-Mahdi is one of two vice presidents. The other, Tariq al-Hashemi, is Sunni.

A public works employee, Tagrid Ali, said he was listening to the speech. "Then I heard a big explosion," he said. "I fell to the ground and whole place was filled with black smoke."

Iraqi and U.S. soldiers cordoned off the area and bomb-detection teams combed the building. An Associated Press photographer saw a man being led from the building by security forces, but there was no official word on arrests.

At least 10 people were killed and 18 injured in the blast, police said.

On Sunday, the leader of a powerful Shiite militia, the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, complained that the U.S.-Iraqi security sweeps around Baghdad have done nothing to stem the bombings that mostly target Shiite civilians.

The statement — read in Baghdad by an aide to al-Sadr — nearly coincided with a suicide bombing that killed at least 42 people at a mostly Shiite business college.