The recruits, who had just joined the force, were struck by a car bomb near Baquba, north of Baghdad, as they travelled to the Kurdish northern region for training. Thirteen other recruits were wounded.

At least eight more Iraqis were killed in attacks elsewhere in the country, including two children machine-gunned in a car and an ambulance driver shot through the head as he drove to a hospital, security officials said.

The children, two boys aged 7 and 10, died in the drive-by shooting when gunmen targeted their parents' car south of Kirkuk. The parents were wounded.

The ambulance driver was shot dead in Kirkuk itself.

Three more men were shot dead while travelling in a car just south of Baghdad, near Iskandariyah.

Two Iraqi soldiers died when their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb near Dujail, north of Baghdad.

Another soldier was killed and an officer wounded in drive-by shooting on the road between Baiji and Tikrit.

And eight unidentified bodies were fished out of a water purification plant at Rustimiyah, south of the capital. They were believed to have been in the water for over a week.

In other violence, Turkey's ambassador to Iraq survived an ambush on his convoy as it drove through western Baghdad on Monday, his embassy said.

Unal Cevikoz was travelling back from near the airport to his embassy when gunshots were fired at all three cars in his convoy, a diplomat said on condition anonymity.

"Nobody was hurt," the diplomat added.

There have been numerous attacks on diplomats in the violence-wracked Iraqi capital with several being kidnapped and killed.

Meanwhile, Iraqi soldiers foiled a suicide attack on an army base north of Kirkuk.

The driver of the booby-trapped car, who had just dropped off a cameraman to film the attack, was shot as he approached the entrance to a military camp, Colonel Sarhat Kader said.

The car then blew up killing both the driver and the cameraman who stood nearby. There were no other injuries.

Four US contractors killed in Iraq

Four US civilian contractors were killed in a road crash Sunday in western Iraq, the US military said Monday.

The contractors were riding in a bus which was hit by a 7-ton truck, the statement said.

Eighteen other civilians, whose nationality was not specified, were injured in the accident near the Al Asad Air Base, 180 kilometres (100 miles) west of Baghdad. One US marine was also slightly hurt in the crash.