Just hours earlier, a suicide car bomb in Hilla, 90 km south of Baghdad killed 12 and wounded over 30, police said. The Hilla attack took place at around 6:00 p.m. (1400 GMT) whena suicide bomber drove an explosive-laden car and blew up the vehicle near a car shop.

    The town of Hilla has witnessed a number of bloody attacks in the past.

    On Feb. 28, 2005, a car bomb attack at a medical center here killed more than 110 Iraqi civilians and wounded around 200, marking the deadliest single attack in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March, 2003.

    Also on Tuesday, a third blast occurred at around 9:00 p.m. (1700 GMT) when a bomb hidden in a plastic bag went off outside a bakery in east of Baghdad, killing at least nine people and injuring 10, police said.

    The blast rocked the New Baghdad area, a mixed neighborhood in the eastern part of the city.

    In another development, the bodies of two Marines missing as aresult of a helicopter crash in the western Anbar province last Saturday have been recovered, a U.S. military statement said on Tuesday.

¡¡  Earlier in the day, mortar rounds hit the heavily guarded Interior Ministry in central Baghdad, killing two government workers.

    Police said the mortar round, targeting the Interior Ministry compound, killed two female employees and wounded three others. The past two days saw an intensifying of violence in the war-torn country.

    On Monday, around 40 people were also killed in separate attacks, including a car bomb that killed two CBS crew members and severely injured a female correspondent for the network. Enditem

(By Ran Wei)