BAGHDAD, 11 October 2004 — Two blasts killed 18 people, including an American soldier, in Baghdad yesterday as an insurgent group announced the release of 10 Turkish hostages after their company pulled out of the country.

The first explosion was near the Oil Ministry and a nearby police academy soon after 7 a.m. Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said 17 people had been killed by a suicide car bomb that may have gone off before it reached the academy, where recruits were lining up.

“Most of the dead were passers-by, including seven women,” Jihad said.

An Interior Ministry official said investigators were still trying to decide if the blast was caused by a bomb or a rocket. He put the death toll at six. Police put it at nine.

In eastern Baghdad, the US military said a suicide bomber attacked a US convoy, wounding an American soldier who later died. Two civilians were also wounded. The ministry official said the bomber’s charred body was found inside his vehicle.

Insurgents and militants trying to undermine the US-backed government have mounted frequent bomb, rocket and mortar attacks on state buildings and Iraqi security forces.

The Pentagon and the interim government are eager to improve security throughout the country before the January elections for a national assembly and prevent insurgents from derailing them.

Hours after the blasts, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrived in the country on an unannounced visit.

The United States and its allies in Iraq are engaged in a battle of wills with insurgents, Rumsfeld told US Marines during a stop at a desert airbase northwest of the capital. “They are hoping to cause members of the coalition to decide that the pain and the ugliness and the difficulty of the task is simply too great,” Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld said the violence was expected to increase in the run-up to next year’s elections and it was unlikely the United States would pull out any troops before then.

Rumsfeld held separate meetings with US commanders, US Ambassador John Negroponte and interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi in Baghdad.

“An armed group calling itself Salafist Abu Bakr Al-Seddiq Group released 10 Turkish hostages it had been holding for 40 days,” Al-Jazeera TV said.

“The group said in a statement that the 10 were freed after the Turkish company (employing them) stopped operations and totally pulled out of Iraq,” Al-Jazeera added.

A Turkish construction company announced on Sept. 21 that it was freezing its activities in Iraq after 10 of its workers were taken hostage.

“We are suspending our activities in Iraq... until the injustice against our company and 10 innocent Turkish workers is undone,” Ali Haydar Veziroglu, the chairman of the Ankara-based Vinsan company, said in a statement.

His announcement came three days after Al-Jazeera reported that the Salafist group said it kidnapped 10 employees of a US-Turkish company and threatened to kill them unless the firm halted its operations in Iraq within three days.

Veziroglu said Vinsan has no US partner in its $161-million project to build a highway near Baghdad.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi government said it would give Shiite militiamen five days to hand in weapons under a peace agreement. National Security Adviser Kassim Daoud told a news conference that the interim government would commit more than $500 million to rebuilding Sadr City, a slum damaged in battles with US troops. The Mehdi Army of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr agreed to hand over weapons to Iraqi police from today.

— Additional input from agencies