Two ministers escaped assassination bids on Monday as insurgents set their sights on Iraq's beleaguered government, still struggling to curb the raging bloodshed.
The attacks came as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told visiting Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem that his violence-wracked country would not be a proxy battleground for Syria and the United States to settle their differences.
A deputy health minister, Hakim al-Zamili, said he escaped an assassination bid in which gunmen killed two of his bodyguards.
Deputy health minister Ammar al-Assafar was kidnapped on Sunday by gunmen dressed in security uniforms from his home in Baghdad's.
"We as health ministry officials have become a target," Zamili told AFP, saying his convoy was ambushed in central Baghdad's Al-Fadhil neighbourhood on the way home from his ministry.
Minister without portfolio Mohammed Abbas al-Oraibi was the second official to survive an assassination attempt on Monday.
He was returning to Baghdad from the southern city of Amara when his convoy was struck by a roadside bomb on the outskirts of the capital, one of his aides told AFP.
Muallem -- the first Syrian minister to visit Baghdad since the US-led war which ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003 -- met Maliki and powerful politician Abdel Aziz al-Hakim on Monday.
The visit comes amid US charges that Syria has failed to prevent militants from crossing the border into Iraq to fuel the insurgency.
US military spokesman Major General William Caldwell said that up to 70 foreign fighters were entering Iraq by crossing the Syrian border and 20 percent of those fighters captured in Iraq were Syrians.
On Sunday, Iraqi authorities announced that a suicide bomber who attacked building labourers in the city of Hilla just south of the capital was Syrian.
At least 22 people were killed in the attack when the bomber posing as a contractor lured the workers towards him and then blew himself up.
Maliki urged Muallem that Iraq should not be turned into a proxy battleground for setting differences with the United States.
"If Syria or any other state has differences with the United States, it's their own business," Maliki told reporters during a joint news conference with Muallem.
"It should settle these differences, but not at our cost."
Syria should be "more understanding towards us," he said. "What goes on in Iraq is a threat for everybody. The interest of Syria is to contribute in the stability of Iraq."
Muallem denied Syria wanted to see instability grip its eastern neighbour.
"Danger to Iraq is danger for the entire region," he said.
On Sunday, the Syrian foreign minister said the key reason for the bloodshed was the presence of US-led troops, who have been in Iraq since the
March 2003 invasion.
Earlier on Monday, Muallem said that his visit to Iraq was not an attempt to appease the United States.
"I am not a mediator of the United States in the region and there is no dialogue between Syria and the United States," Muallem said during a separate news conference with Hakim.
"I did not come to Iraq to appease the United States or any other party," he said, while also condemning "terrorist acts which target Iraq and its institutions".
Earlier this month, Muallem said Syria was ready to engage in a "dialogue" with the United States to stabilise Iraq.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has urged US President George W. Bush to engage Syria and its regional ally Iran in talks on Iraq.
Hakim said he had discussed with Muallem the "two-way extradition of criminals".
A number of officials of Saddam's former ruling Baath party found refuge in Syria and are now wanted by the Iraqi government.
At least 16 people were killed in attacks on the ground on Monday, six of them in the flashpoint province of Diyala north of the capital.
Among them was the popular satirist and broadcaster Walid Hassan, whose weekly show "Caricature" on Iraq's Al-Sharqiya channel poked fun at the sectarian politics gripping the country.
On the southern outskirts of Baghdad, police found 14 bodies believed to be those of Arabs kidnapped, tortured and executed in retaliation for a bombing in a Shia neighbourhood on Sunday, a security source said.
Police and troops were still hunting for an Austrian and four US security guards kidnapped by militiamen disguised as policemen near the Kuwaiti border on Thursday, the British military said.
But Higher Education Minister Abed Dhiab al-Ujaili said he was resuming his cabinet duties after stopping work in protest at a mass abduction of ministry staff last week.
Armed men dressed in police uniforms kidnapped up to 150 staff and visitors from the ministry's scientific research institute in broad daylight.
Ujaili said only 85 of the hostages had been released but government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh has disputed the figure.
The US military announced the death of two more servicemen in Iraq, taking its losses since the invasion to 2,861, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.