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Iraqis look at a injured man at a hospital, following a mortar attack in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, Nov. 20, 2006. A mortar shell slammed into an eastern Baghdad wholesale market area, killing three shoppers and wounding five others, police said. [AP]

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Assassins killed a popular Baghdad television comedian and a professor at a university south of the capital on Monday, but failed in attempts to kill two government officials as the country's leader met with Syria's foreign minister about improving security and reopening diplomatic relations.

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In all, 20 Iraqis were killed in a series of attacks in Baghdad, Ramadi and Baqouba, and the bodies of 25 Iraqis who had been kidnapped and tortured were found on the streets of the capital and in Dujail, north of Baghdad, police said.

The attacks raised Iraq's death toll to at least 1,368 already in November, well above the 1,216 who died in all of October, which was the deadliest month in Iraq since The Associated Press began tracking the figure in April 2005.

The actual totals are likely considerably higher because many deaths are not reported. Victims in those cases are quickly buried according to Muslim custom and never reach morgues or hospitals to be counted.

Minister of State Mohammed Abbas Auraibi, a member of Iraq's Shiite majority, said a roadside bomb hit his convoy at about 9:30 a.m. Monday as it was driving on a highway in eastern Baghdad, wounding two of his bodyguards.

"I was returning from an official visit to Amarah when our convoy was attacked," he said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "Thank God the two guards were only slightly injured."

Amarah is a mostly Shiite city 200 miles southeast of Baghdad.

Hakim al-Zamily, a Shiite deputy health minister, also escaped unhurt when gunmen opened fire on his convoy in downtown Baghdad at noon on Monday, killing two of his guards, the minister said.

The attacks came one day after suspected Sunni Muslim insurgents kidnapped another deputy health minister, Shiite Ammar al-Saffar, from his home in northern Baghdad, the Iraqi army and police reported. They said the gunmen wore police uniforms and arrived in seven vehicles to abduct al-Saffar, who was believed to be the senior-most government official kidnapped in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

Al-Saffar was snatched nearly a week after dozens of suspected Shiite militia gunmen in police uniforms kidnapped scores of people from a Ministry of Higher Education office in Baghdad. That ministry is predominantly Sunni.

The civilian victims of Monday's widespread attacks in Iraq included actor Walid Hassan, a famous comedian on al-Sharqiya TV who was shot while driving in western Baghdad. He had performed in a comedy series called "Caricature," which mocked coalition forces and the Iraqi governments since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Assailants also shot to death Fulayeh al-Ghurabi, a Shiite professor at Babil University in the province south of Baghdad, as he was driving home from the school at midday, police said.

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