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Gunmen kidnapped Iraq's deputy health minister from his home in a Sunni district of Baghdad as at least 54 people were killed in attacks across the war-torn country.
The violence erupted as Foreign Minister Walid Muallem of neighbouring Syria began a landmark visit to Baghdad, the first since former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003.
In a daring daylight operation gunmen — some dressed in security uniforms — kidnapped Ammar al-Assafar, a Shiite, from his home in Baghdad's Sunni district of Adhamiyah, a security source said.
“Gunmen came in four cars and kidnapped the minister from his home in Adhamiyah,” the source said.
His was the most high profile abduction since Sunni MP Taisheer al-Mashhadani was kidnapped on July 1, allegedly by Shiite 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.
The day's most brutal attack came when 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 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.
Minutes before Syria's Muallem addressed reporters in Baghdad, state-run television Al-Iraqiya announced that the suicide car bomber was “a Syrian”.
It said two Egyptians and an Iraqi were also arrested for the bombing.
After meeting his counterpart Hoshyar Zebari, Muallem called for a timetable for a withdrawal of foreign troops saying it will help “stabilise Iraq”.
Muallem also urged Iraqis to retain the country's unity, saying Syria “will back the country's political process and is ready to offer all help required in maintaining the unity of Iraq”.
Zebari said Muallem's visit would open “a new page in relations between the two countries”, adding that Iraq expected “complete relations with Syria”.
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 Sunni 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.
On Monday Muallem will meet Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani.
Shiite MP Bassem Sharif told AFP on Sunday 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.
But the violence continued on Sunday with a group of farm labourers coming 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 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 11 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, 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.
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.
