Iraq's incoming government is considering imposing martial law to help stabilise the country after another two car bomb attacks on Thursday killed at least 41 Iraqis.

The first bomb, packed with artillery shells, exploded outside an army recruiting centre in central Baghdad killing 35 people. The centre had been hit in a similar strike earlier this year. A second attack north of Baghdad killed another six Iraqi civil defence soldiers.

The blasts were the latest in a spate of increasingly well-organised attacks, including suicide attacks against foreign civilians working for the US-led coalition, an assassination of a senior Iraqi official, and the sabotage of military and industrial targets.

Co-ordinated strikes on Iraq's oil pipelines in the north and south of the country have reduced exports to a trickle and depleted the country's prime source of revenue.

The escalating violence has forced the new interim government of Ayad Allawi to consider assuming broader security powers in the aftermath of the June 30 transition.

"A decision to impose martial law could be taken if the attacks continue," said Hazem Shaalan, the defence minister.

Muwaffaq Rubaie, national security adviser, confirmed to the Financial Times on Thursday that the idea of declaring a form of martial law was under active consideration by Iraqi ministers.

The debate highlights the dilemma for the new Iraqi government, which is trying to establish order without jeopardising its democratic credentials.

Such laws carry uncomfortable echoes of the legal fabrications used by the former regime of Saddam Hussein and many current Arab governments to justify repressive and totalitarian rule.

The idea was at an early stage, Mr Rubaie said, and had not been discussed substantively with US officers. At least 130,000 American soldiers will remain in the country after an Iraqi government takes over.

Mr Rubaie said a new law would need to be passed because the temporary constitution agreed in March as the basis of the new Iraqi state did not include provisions for emergency rule.

"It [the new law] should not have sweeping powers. It should be limited in time and space," he said. "[But] the terrorists are shooting people on sight. You need to be a little bit more proactive, a little bit more robust."

In an effort to win public confidence, Iraqi officials such as Mr Shaalan and Mr Rubaie have sounded increasingly belligerent in their condemnations of the spate of car-bombings and assassinations. "In the coming days we will take the battle from house to house and from street to street with all the means we possess," Mr Shaalan said on Thursday. Kofi Annan, United Nations secretary general, said that Iraq was still too dangerous for the UN to return, telling reporters in New York he was "extremely worried" about the security situation on the ground.

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