Meanwhile, a video dropped at the offices of an international news agency in Baghdad showed kidnapped French journalist Florence Aubenas, 43, pleading for help, news agencies reported.
Though undated, the video was the first indication that Aubenas, who disappeared with her interpreter Jan. 5, might be alive.
Demonstrators in Hilla condemn Monday's suicide bombing outside a medical clinic in the city. The attack targeted recruits for the nascent armed forces.
(Khalid Mohammed -- AP)
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Transcript: The Post's Jackie Spinner, returning to the United States, discussed her nine months of reporting in Iraq.
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Video: Gunmen killed a judge and attorney working for Iraq's special tribunal.
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"Please help me, my health is very bad. I'm very bad psychologically also," Aubenas said in English. "Please, it's urgent now."
A correspondent for the French newspaper Liberation, Aubenas appeared alone in front of a maroon background dressed in a gray sweatshirt and black trousers. She is believed to have been kidnapped from her car near her Baghdad hotel.
Aubenas is the second female journalist seized this year. Giuliana Sgrena, a reporter for the Rome daily Il Manifesto, was abducted early last month and is believed to still be in captivity.
In Hilla, a predominantly Shiite Muslim city, the provincial governor ordered funeral processions banned, the Associated Press reported. The governor, Walid Janabi, did not elaborate, but police and residents said they feared new attacks.
Angry residents demonstrating in front of the medical clinic chanted, "No to terrorism!" and demanded that interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi step down, according to reporters at the scene.
The large death toll in the bombing, one of the deadliest since the insurgency began, is likely to test the restraint of the country's majority Shiite Muslim population in the face of attacks by insurgents who are predominantly Sunni Muslim. Shiites for the most part have refused to be drawn into a sectarian conflict as their religious leaders have counseled patience.
In a separate development, U.S.-led forces said Iraqi soldiers conducting a routine reconnaissance mission on a road leading into southern Baghdad Tuesday ran into "a terrorist checkpoint."
In the ensuing firefight, eight insurgents were killed and 11 captured.
The Iraqi soldiers, four of whom were injured, also confiscated two of the insurgents' vehicles, the military stated.
On Tuesday, the U.S. military reported the deaths on Monday of two U.S. soldiers in a vehicle accident in Baiji, about 120 miles north of the capital.
