BAGHDAD, Dec 5: At least 44 people were killed in a wave of mainly anti-Shiite attacks in Baghdad on Tuesday after a Shia leader asked US President George W. Bush for more arms and authority to combat “terrorism”.

The latest bombings came on the eve of the release of a US report on its options for the war-torn country, with Mr Bush under growing pressure at home to come up with an exit strategy.

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group, led by former secretary of state James Baker, is expected to call for a phased withdrawal of US forces without setting a timetable, as well as push for talks with Iran and Syria on controlling the violence.

On Monday, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, an influential cleric and political leader, said during a landmark trip to Washington that US forces were not doing enough to stop attacks on Iraqis -- an assertion grimly underlined by events the next day.

A bus carrying employees of the Shia religious endowment, which manages mosque affairs, was first blasted by a car bomb and then riddled with bullets by a band of gunmen in northeast Baghdad, killing 15 people and wounding nine.

Moments later, on the other side of town, three car bombs exploded at a crowded petrol station in Bayaa, killing 15 people and wounding 25, security officials said.

Multiple car bomb attacks have become increasingly common, most dramatically on Nov 23, when more than 200 Shia were killed in the Sadr City slum district of Baghdad.In northern Baghdad, a suicide car bomb ploughed into a crowd of recruits at a national police academy, killing seven and wounding 12 as concealed gunmen also opened fire.

Iraq's security forces are a main target of insurgents.

In talks with US officials, Hakim of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), demanded his country be given the means to fight Sunni rebels and was blunt in his criticism of US forces' inability to stop the violence.

Baghdad needs “American forces to remain in Iraq while transferring more authority to Iraqi officials and forces to enable them to deal with terrorism,” he said.

.President Bush expressed his dissatisfaction with the Iraqi government's performance after talks with Hakim.“I told him that we are not satisfied with the pace of progress in Iraq,” he said. “We talked about the need to give the government of Iraq more

capability as quickly as possible.” Mr Bush also focused on the role of Iraq's neighbours, Syria and especially Iran, which continues to have close ties to SCIRI, a movement founded among Iraqi exiles during the Iran-Iraq war.

In other violence on Tuesday, a roadside bomb exploded next to an Iraqi army patrol, killing two soldiers in the predominantly Sunni west Baghdad neighbourhood of Yarmuk.

Three people were killed when a car bomb hit a marketplace in Amil in southwest Baghdad, while mortars slammed into the mixed north Baghdad neighbourhood of Al-Qahira, killing two children.—AFP