A bomb among a crowd of laborers waiting for work in Baghdad's Sadr City has killed at least 29 people and wounded 59.

Brigadier-General Abdel-Karim Khalaf, an Iraqi interior ministry spokesman, said the toll was provisional and the number is expected to rise.

The bomb, hidden in a roadside rubbish bin, was triggered at about 7.30am (0430 GMT) as workers waited for employment, according to another security source.

There was no initial word on who might have planted the device. 

Sadr City is a poor Shia area in eastern Baghdad and a base for al-Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr.

The district is currently surrounded by a cordon of US troops searching for an abducted American soldier.

17 killed in attack on Iraq police bus

Seventeen people have been killed in Iraq after armed men ambushed a bus carrying police translators, trainers and cleaning workers.

The bus was taking them from a British-run police academy in a town 12km from the southern city Basra on Sunday.

A police captain in Basra said: "The men were forced off a bus on the city's outskirts at about 4:00pm (1300 GMT)."

The police then discovered the bodies dumped in several locations around the city about four hours later.

Meanwhile, at least 17 fighters died after US forces fought off a series of attacks in Balad, which lies about 80km north of Baghdad.

The US military said in a statement that soldiers called in an air strike after the first ambush, which left four attackers dead. They killed 13 more after fighting off the second assault with air and ground fire.

During the fighting, US soldiers spotted secondary explosions, suggesting that roadside bombs had been laid for them but had detonated prematurely, the statement said.

In other incidents, two police officers were shot dead in an ambush by unidentified assailants, while a popular Iraqi state television presenter was shot dead along with her driver, after being kidnapped in Baghdad.

Journalists at the network told AFP that Nakshin Hamid, an Iraqi Kurd, worked for programming that was broadcast to Iraq's Kurdish and Christian minorities on Al-Iraqiya television and that she had recently been forced to move house after receiving death threats.

Abbas Aboud, assistant news editor, said: "She was kidnapped this morning along with her colleague, the driver, as she came in to work. Less than 30 minutes later someone called us from her mobile and said: 'We killed her'."

A security official said that the 31-year-old's body was found with the body of her driver, Anas Qassem Najm.

In another violent incident, armed men opened fire on a bus carrying pilgrims back from Makka as it neared the town of Khalis, north of Baghdad, wounding four travelers and killing their imam, Sheikh Ghazi al-Dulaimi from Baquba, police said.

In nearby Baquba, a gang broke into the home of an 80-year-old woman, gunned her down, and kidnapped her sons, according to medical sources.

Two Iraqi army soldiers were also killed by a roadside bomb.

Meanwhile, thousands of US troops were scouring Baghdad for a missing soldier.  An American of Iraqi descent, it is believed that he was kidnapped when he slipped out of the fortified Green Zone a week ago to visit relatives.

A relative of the missing soldier told AFP that he was kidnapped by masked armed men from a family home after coming to see his secret Iraqi wife.

PHOTO CAPTION

Iraqis check wreck of a car bomb in Iskandariyah, 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday Oct. 29, 2006. (AP)