Gunmen have attacked the convoy of Iraqi Planning Minister Mehdi al-Hafidh in Baghdad, killing one of his bodyguards.
Iraqi police said the minister, a key figure in efforts to reconstruct Iraq, had survived the attack.
Earlier, Iraqi security forces discovered the bodies of 26 people, all of them shot dead, in the Iraqi-Syrian border town of Qaim.
The identities of the bodies were not clear, but all were wearing civilian clothes. One was a woman.
Qaim, where insurgents are suspected of regularly crossing into Iraq from Syria, is the site of regular clashes between rebels and US forces.
One dead in Baghdad suicide blast
Elsewhere in Iraq, at least one person was killed when a suicide bomber driving a refuse truck blew himself up near a hotel in central Baghdad.
The hotel is used by Iraqi police and their foreign instructors.
Police say the explosion, in which at least 20 people were injured, was also close to the Agriculture Ministry building.
In a separate incident in the southern city of Basra, a roadside bomb killed one policeman.
