Gunmen and bombers killed 30 people in Baghdad today as a powerful Iraqi Shia leader urged President Bush to strike harder at Sunni rebels to avert civil war.
Gunmen killed the 14 employees of a Shia religious foundation in the capital, while officials said three car bombs killed 16 people and wounded 25 in a separate attack near a fuel station in a religiously mixed area in southern Baghdad.
The civilian employees for the Shia Endowment, a foundation that oversees religious sites and mosques, were killed when their bus was ambushed, a spokesman for the organisation said.
He said 14 employees were killed and eight wounded when gunmen forced the bus to stop on a highway in Qahira district.
Interior Ministry sources said gunmen first set off a car bomb and then sprayed the bus with bullets.
The attack came a day after Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a cleric and head of the biggest party in Iraq's government, SCIRI, met Mr Bush in Washington as Iraqi and US officials struggle to contain violence pitching the country toward all-out civil war.
Last month, gunmen attacked a vehicle of the Sunni Endowment near the southern city of Basra, killing one local official and three of his bodyguards.
In a clear sign of American alarm at escalating violence, the US ambassador in Baghdad and the commander of US forces implored Iraqis to break a cycle of violence that they said would destroy the country.
Last month, more than 200 Shia were killed in the worst bombing since the US invasion.