The explosion happened at 9.50am local time (0650 BST), almost two hours after the detonation of an explosives-rigged bicycle near an army recruiting centre in Hilla, 60 miles south of Baghdad. The Hilla attack killed at least 12 people and injured 28, police said.

A man posing as a potential army recruit planted the bicycle outside the recruiting centre early in the morning, police Lieutenant Osama Ahmed said. The man walked off as volunteers to sign up for the army gathered outside the building.

Hilla was the scene of one of the worst bomb attacks in Iraq when a suicide car bomber killed 125 national guard and police recruits in February last year.

Insurgents have often targeted Iraqi army and police volunteers as they wait outside recruiting stations, a tactic intended to discourage people from joining the security services.

In another attack in Baghdad, three police officers were reported to have been killed and another 14 injured when twin bombs, including one planted in a car, targeted a police patrol.

At least 13 people were also killed in a string of shootings and roadside bombings across the country.

The toll included a person shot dead by US troops in the northern city of Mosul after his car was driven too close to them and three people, among them the senior justice ministry official Nadiya Mohammed Hassan, killed in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad.

The Iraqi capital has been the focus of a major US-led operation to neutralise growing sectarian fighting between Sunni Muslims - who make up a minority of the population but have traditionally dominated Iraq's government - and the country's Shia majority.

The Shia-controlled interior ministry has been accused of sheltering death squads who have killed hundreds of Sunnis in execution-style murders over the past year.

Over the past month, the US-backed security clampdown over the past month has reportedly led to a halving of Baghdad's murder rate, with US and Iraqi patrols carrying out door-to-door inspections in volatile suburbs.

However, the unrest has resulted in a death rate estimated by the UN at 100 people a day.

Insurgents also defied a large-scale Baghdad security plan with two more attacks -- a roadside booby trap and a car bomb -- which killed another three people in the central Karrada neighbourhood, a police officer said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a medic in the city's Yarmuk hospital said "We received this morning the body of a first lieutenant in the Iraqi army and the bodies of two gunmen killed in clashes in Dura this morning."

Dura is one of a group of flashpoint Baghdad neighbourhoods which have be chosen by US and Iraqi forces for special protection, and violence there will be seen as a setback for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's peace plan.

Another Iraqi army officer was killed and two wounded in roadside bombing between the central city of Kut and Baghdad, police said.

Meanwhile five bodies washed up on the banks of the Tigris south of the capital, police said. They had been blindfolded and shot in the head in the trademark style of the capital's sectarian death squads.

In the town of Samawa one person was killed Wednesday as volunteers seeking jobs in the army clashed with the police.

The latest attacks come at a time when Iraq's hard-pressed government forces are battling to rein in a surge in bloodshed, which in the past four days has already left nearly 150 dead.

The Baghdad market blast rattled windows one kilometre (half a mile) away as a plume of dust and smoke climbed above the skyline.

Body parts and the remains of those killed and wounded were strewn across the area. Windows of nearby shops were shattered, two cars were ripped apart and popular restaurant blown open.

"Firefighters are fighting to quell the fire as many shops are burning," a police officer said at the scene, adding that the bomb had been placed in a bag and partially concealed by a bicycle.

"People are gathering the mobile phones and money of those killed and storing them in a nearby mosque. They were also collecting flesh and bodyparts in plastic bags," he added.

Insurgents also used a bicycle to hide a bomb that exploded outside the army recruitment centre in the Shiite town of Hilla, 120 kilometres (75 miles) south of Baghdad.

The recruitment centre was set up four days ago to boost enlistments by youths from the mainly Shiite areas around Samawa, Karbala and Najaf, the officer said.

A medic at Hilla's city hospital said doctors had received 12 bodies and admitted 38 people wounded in the attack.

Iraqi defence ministry spokesman Ibrahim Shaker also confirmed the bombing but not the casualty toll. An AFP correspondent said at least 1,000 candidates had been waiting to sign up at the centre.

Haider Kadhim, 25, a candidate from Hilla said: "We were expecting such a terror act against us. The city has got used to such explosions and the place is not well protected."

Another candidate, Amer Habib, said: "The volunteers should have been searched before coming to this place. They should also not be allowed to stand outside the camp as it makes them as easy prey for terrorists.

"We asked for that but no one heard us," he said.

Iraqi security forces are a regular target of insurgents who bomb army and police recruitment centres to stop young men trying to escape Iraq's massive unemployment by joining the forces.

The bombing will also be seen as yet another blow to plans by the US-led coalition to build Iraqi security forces capable of taking on the raging insurgency and sectarian violence that has ravaged the country.

In Samawa, 250 kilometres (150 miles) south of Baghdad, hundreds of young men who had gathered at the governorate building seeking jobs in security forces turned hostile and clashed with the police, a local medic said.

The angry mob pelted stones at the building and burnt tyres when clashes broke out between them and the police. One volunteer was killed and another 10 wounded, including three policemen, he said.

In Karrada's twin bombings one policeman and two civilians were killed when the bombs went off near a gas station. Another 14 were wounded, police said.

Iraq's latest bout of bloodshed -- which erupted as Maliki held peace talks with tribal leaders on Saturday -- has also killed 13 US soldiers, most of whom were involved in a large-scale security sweep in and around Baghdad.

Will the term limit be repealed?

Should it be repealed, will Bush, who will definitely run again, be re-elected?

If the term limit is not repealed, how likely is it that Bush will create some crises justifying calling off or postponing the next elections?

I rate the first question as likely, especially considering the bi-partisan effort involved. There are even sound and democratic basis to remove presidential term limits so that voters get to determine presidential terms of office.

However, the devil is in the second and third questions.

Suppose the 22nd amendment is repealed enabling Bush to run again. With his record, including Afghanistan, Iraq, now Lebanon, biggest 4 budget deficits in US history, highest number of scandals of any US president, highest number of civil liberties violation of any US president, including the Patriot Act and secret wire tapping, mismanaging rescue efforts in the largely Afro-American Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina, how likely is it that Bush will be re-elected?

Indeed, there is even the question of whether it serves Bush's interest to have the 22nd amendment repealed, forcing him to face the electorate again. Wouldn't Bush be better served by a massive terrorist attack upon the US instead? In 2003 General Franks, who lead the American war against Iraq, stated that a "massive casualty producing event" would result in Americans questioning their constitution and militarising their country in order to avoid similar future events!

General Franks was talking about the 2004 elections. However, while Bush did not need to resort to such extremes in 2004, in 2008 with a proper mandate very unlikely, the situation is different.

Before you judge me a "conspiracy theory" geek, consider these facts:

- Bush, who attended Yale like his father and grandfather, belongs to an order called the "Order of Skull and Bones" whose American chapter was founded and continues to exist in Yale College since 1832.

Hegel's theory

- This order was first founded in Germany. It is based on the philosophy of Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, then chairman of the University of Berlin who advanced the theory that the masses must devote their absolute obedience to the State which he called the "final end" in the "march of God in the world". In this way, Hegel theorised, "The State has the supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the State." Hegelism is the foundation of the "New World Order" created through the process of "Constructive Chaos". Papa and Baby Bush, members of the Order of Skull and Bones, are advocates of the "New World Order".

- The Bush wars we have seen in the Middle East so far are part of that process of "Constructive Chaos" advocated by Hegelism. This process, not yet completed, makes it imperative that Bush remains president. Bush senior's failure to get re-elected was a setback in the process of the "Constructive Chaos" necessary to create the New World Order.

- Bush junior has appointed the highest number of Bonesmen of any US administration.

- Neo-Conservatives direct the policies of the Bush administration through organisations such as Project for the New American Century (PNAC). PNAC's 90 page manifesto, "Building America's Defences", discusses in detail how America must transform its power in the new century. In paragraph 2 of page 51 PNAC describes this transformation as follows: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalysing event like a new Pearl Harbor." PNAC was founded and is headed by William Kristol, a well known Jewish-American and a Zionist. The manifesto, dated September 2000, is PNAC's policy guideline for the Bush administration. Note the reference to a "catastrophic catalysing event like Pearl Harbor". This catastrophic event seems to have happened exactly one year later, on 9/11, 2001!

- The Arab world is uniquely important for those aspiring for world domination. This region has been the target of foreign powers at least for the past 1,000 years.

Bush's expressions, "Axis of Evil" and most recently "Islamic Facists", should leave no doubt about the extent that Bush and his neoconservatives will go towards achieving their aim, especially now that there is no "Evil Empire" to worry about.

Unless stopped, what catastrophes await us as we get closer to 2008 and the Bush day of reckoning?

Only time will tell.