50 killed in attacks across Iraq
Middle East Desk Report

BAGHDAD—At least 50 people have died in attacks across Iraq, including a suicide car bombing in a mainly Shiite town that killed nearly two dozen building labourers looking for work.
The violence erupted Sunday 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 Shiite town of Hilla south of Baghdad, killing at least 22 people and wounding 44, police said.
Witness Haider Ali, 25, said the bomber posed as a contractor looking for daily labourers gathered in the Bab al-Hussein area in the centre of Hilla.
“He came to the area asking for labourers and as these dozens of workers gathered around his car, he blew himself up,” Ali told AFP. “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 August 30 when a bomb hidden on a bicycle was set off at an army recruitment centre, killing 12 army hopefuls.
A group of farm labourers also came under attack from armed men near the village of Sadiya al-Jabal, east of the flashpoint 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 neighbourhood. 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, Syria’s Muallem arrived in Baghdad for talks with Prime Minister Nuri al-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.
US and British authorities have often charged that Sunni insurgent groups receive aid from Syria to support the insurgency in Iraq. The US military says Syrians make up the second largest group of foreign fighters entering Iraq after Egyptians. Lawmaker Mahmud 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 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 has recently been urging US President George W. Bush to involve Iraq’s neighbours Syria and Iran in efforts to stabilize 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 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 Sunday.