At least 53 people died in attacks across Iraq on Sunday, including a suicide car bombing that killed dozens, and gunmen kidnapped the deputy health minister from his home in a Sunni district of Baghdad.
The violence erupted as Foreign Minister Walid Muallem of neighbouring Syria began a landmark visit to Baghdad -- the first since the toppling of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 2003.
A suicide car bomber posing as a contractor looking for workers blew himself up among a crowd of labourers in the mainly Shia town of Hilla south of the capital, killing at least 22 people and wounding 44, police said.
"He came to the area asking for labourers and as these dozens of workers gathered around his car, he blew himself up," witness Haider Ali, 25, told AFP.
The last major attack in Hilla was on August 30 when a bicycle bomb exploded at an army recruitment centre, killing 12 army hopefuls.
In a daring daylight operation gunmen kidnapped Iraq's deputy health minister Ammar al-Assafar, a Shia, from his home in Baghdad's Sunni district of Adhamiyah, a security source told AFP.
"Gunmen came in four cars and kidnapped the minister from his home in Adhamiyah," the source said.
His abduction was the most high profile since Sunni MP Taisheer al-Mashhadani was kidnapped on July 1, allegedly by Shia militiamen. She was abducted along with her seven bodyguards but was later released.
Assafar's seizure also comes after the kidnapping of five Westerners in southern Iraq on Thursday and the mass abduction of dozens of men from a Baghdad ministry building last week.
On Sunday a group of farm labourers also came under attack near the village of Sadiya al-Jabal, east of the flashpoint city of Baquba. Eight were killed and two more wounded when gunmen sprayed their minibus with bullets, police said.
Ten Iraqis were killed when four car bombs exploded within minutes of each other at a bus station in south-east Baghdad's largely Shia Al-Mashtel neighbourhood.
Three children were also killed in the northern town of Hawijah when a booby-trapped toy exploded.
Elsewhere in Iraq 10 others were killed, including three people when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a condolence meeting in the northern city of Kirkuk, police said.
Meanwhile, Syria's Muallem arrived in Baghdad for talks with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on his first visit to Iraq since Saddam's ouster in the US-led invasion.
The US military has regularly accused Syria of failing to prevent foreign fighters crossing its border into Iraq to fuel the raging insurgency that has killed thousands.
US and British authorities have often charged that insurgent groups receive aid from Syria to support the insurgency. The US military says Syrians make up the second largest group of foreign fighters entering Iraq after Egyptians.
Lawmaker Mahmud Othman said Muallem will hold talks with Maliki, President Jalal Talabani and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.
Shia MP Bassem Sharif told AFP that "security and border-related issues will be negotiated during the visit".
"Many accusations have been levied against Syria of aiding terrorists and giving them protection in Syria. There is an intention to hold talks and a summit between Iraq, Syria and Iran" to discuss these issues, he said.
Earlier this month Muallem said Damascus was ready to engage in a "dialogue" with the United States in a bid to achieve stability in Iraq and the region.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently urged US President George W. Bush to involve Iraq's neighbours Syria and Iran in efforts to stabilise the country.
Meanwhile, security forces continued their hunt for four US citizens and an Austrian kidnapped on Thursday by militiamen disguised as police near the Kuwaiti border as they escorted a vehicle convoy.
"The search continues and we have still not been able to locate them," said Mohammed Ali al-Mussawi, chief of operations at police headquarters in the southern city of Basra.
On Saturday he had said police were closer to locating the hostages.
"We have identified the area where they are held. I can't disclose the place," he said.
Confusion has surrounded the case, with Mussawi denying earlier statements by a Basra official that one of the hostages was killed and two others rescued.
In the northern oil town of Kirkuk Sunday, the Iraqi army said it had killed eight members of al Qaeda in Iraq and wounded 11 more.