BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide car bomber struck as day laborers gathered to find work in a Shiite neighborhood in north Baghdad, killing at least 88 people and wounding 227 in the deadliest of as many as 10 explosions in the Iraqi capital today.

Other explosions and killings - including the slayings of 17 men in a village north of Baghdad - pushed the death toll to more than 120 people.

Al-Qaida in Iraq said it was behind the attacks.

A senior American military official told The Associated Press he believed the bombings were retaliation for the joint Iraqi-U.S. sweep through the northern city of Tal Afar in recent days to evict insurgents from their stronghold near the Syrian border.

As violence again shattered the capital after a period of relative calm, Iraqi lawmakers agreed on last-minute revisions to the contested draft constitution in a bid to appease the disgruntled Sunni minority, the core of the country's virulent insurgency.

At Baghdad's Kazimiyah Hospital, dozens of wounded men lay on stretchers and gurneys, their bandages and clothes soaked in blood. One older man in a traditional Arab gown and checkered head scarf sat in a plastic chair, his blood-soaked underwear exposed with a trail of dried blood snaking down his legs.

Dr. Qays Abdel-Wahab al-Bustani said the hospital had received 75 wounded people and 47 others who were killed in the explosion. Al-Bustani said the wounded were in stable condition.

Gunmen wearing military uniforms, meanwhile, surrounded a village north of Baghdad early today and executed 17 men, police said.

Police Lt. Waleed al-Hayali, in Taji, 10 miles north of Baghdad, said the gunmen detained the victims after searching the village. They were handcuffed, blindfolded and shot. The dead included one policeman and others who worked as drivers and construction workers for the U.S. military, said al-Hayali.

A car bomb hit an American military convoy in eastern Baghdad, and police Capt. Maher Hamad said two U.S. soldiers were wounded, though that was not confirmed.

Another car bomb exploded alongside an Iraqi National Guard convoy in the northern Baghdad district of Shula, killing at least two people.

In central Baghdad, just a few hundred yards from the Rashid Hotel that houses diplomats and foreign contractors, a suicide car bomber attacked a U.S. convoy, police said. Fourteen Iraqi police officers were injured; it was not clear if there were any U.S. casualties.

Sunni militants have mounted a series of attacks on Shiites in an apparent effort to provoke a sectarian conflict. The Kazimiyah district that saw today's deadliest attack is the same area where about 950 people were killed on Sept. 1 during a bridge stampede.

With the Oct. 15 referendum on the draft constitution looming, Iraqi lawmakers announced that the document had been finalized and would be sent to the United Nations for printing and distribution.

Hussein al-Shahristani, the deputy speaker of the National Assembly and a leading Shiite lawmaker, said the latest changes included an apparent bow to demands from the Arab League that the country be described as a founding member of the 22-member pan-Arab body and that it was "committed to its charter."

But that amended clause falls short of demands by Sunnis, who wanted the country's Arab identity clearly spelled out while mentions of federalism be struck from the document. They argue such language could ultimately lead to the disintegration of the multiethnic nation.

Still, the changes, which included clarifying that water resource management was the federal government's responsibility and that the prime minister would have two deputies in the Cabinet, are significant after weeks of discussions on the draft.

Hopes that a relative lull in the violence in the country would continue were shattered with the latest attacks around the capital.

The attacks came as U.S. and Iraqi forces continued their offensive on insurgents in northern Iraq, striking hard at what officials have said are militants sneaking across the border from Syria.

On Tuesday, they launched an attack on the Euphrates River stronghold of Haditha. That attack came after some 200 militants were killed in Tal Afar in several days of fighting. Residents also reported American air strikes in the same region near Qaim, also near the Syrian border.