BAGHDAD, 20 November 2006 — At least 50 people died in attacks across Iraq yesterday, including a suicide car bombing in a mainly Shiite town that killed nearly two dozen building laborers looking for work.

The violence erupted as Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem of neighboring Syria began a landmark visit to Baghdad — the first since the toppling of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Late yesterday, gunmen in camouflage uniforms kidnapped an Iraqi deputy health minister from his home yesterday, his aide and a neighbor said. Ammar Al-Saffar, a member of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s Dawa party, was taken away by gunmen wearing army uniforms accompanied by three men in suits, the neighbor and the aide, who both declined to be identified, said

A suicide car bomber posing as a contractor looking for workers blew himself up among a crowd of laborers in the town of Hilla killing at least 22 people and wounding 44, police said.

Witness Haider Ali, 25, said the bomber posed as a contractor looking for daily laborers gathered in the Bab Al-Hussein area in the center of Hilla. “He came to the area asking for laborers and as these dozens of workers gathered around his car, he blew himself up,” Ali said.

“Why are they attacking poor people? What do they get by killing poor people. This is the work of takfiris (extremists),” said another witness, Qaiz Mohammed.

The last major attack in Hilla was on Aug. 30 when a bomb hidden on a bicycle was set off at an army recruitment center, killing 12 army hopefuls.

A group of farm laborers also came under attack from armed men near the village of Sadiya Al-Jabal, east of the flash point city of Baquba. Eight were killed and two others wounded when gunmen sprayed their minibus with bullets, police said.

Ten Iraqis were killed when four car bombs were set off within minutes of each other at a bus station in southeast Baghdad’s largely Shiite Al-Mashtel neighborhood.

Three children were also killed in the northern town of Hawijah when a booby-trapped toy exploded. Elsewhere in Iraq seven others were killed.

Iraq’s Shiite districts are regular targets of Sunni insurgents in the wave of tit-for-tat sectarian killing that has killed thousands across the violence-wracked country.

Meanwhile, Muallem arrived in Baghdad for talks with Maliki on his first visit to the violence-wracked country since Saddam’s ouster in the US-led invasion.

The US military has regularly accused Syria of failing to stop crossing of foreign fighters from across the border into Iraq to fuel the raging insurgency that has killed thousands.

Lawmaker Mahmoud Othman said Muallem had arrived in Baghdad and will hold talks with Maliki, President Jalal Talabani and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. Shiite MP Bassem Sharif said, “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.

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 getting closer to finding 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. “If someone says he knows about the hostages, it is a lie. Nobody knows anything about them at the moment,” he said yesterday.

Meanwhile, Iraq’s top Sunni leader said yesterday the Shiite-led government had trumped up terrorism charges against him to undermine his role defending a community which faces the brunt of sectarian killings.

Sheikh Harith Al-Dari was issued with an arrest warrant on Thursday by the Interior Minister Jawad Al-Bolani, a Shiite, in a move that enraged Iraq’s Sunnis which is at the heart of a three-year-old insurgency.