The recruits were struck by a car bomb near Baquba, north of the capital, as they headed for the northern Kurdish region to undergo training. Thirteen other recruits were wounded.
At least 11 more Iraqis were killed by insurgents elsewhere, including two children whose family was machine gunned in a car and an ambulance driver shot through the head as he drove to a hospital.
The children, two boys aged seven and 10, died in a drive-by shooting when gunmen targeted their parents' car south of Kirkuk. Their parents were wounded.
Three more men were shot dead while travelling in a car just south of Baghdad, near Iskandariyah.
More deaths
Two Iraqi soldiers died when their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb near Dujail, north of Baghdad. Another soldier was killed and an officer wounded in a drive-by shooting on the road between Baiji and Tikrit.
Two policemen were killed in an exchange of gunfire with rebels in Baghdad.
And, in a chilling discovery, eight unidentified bodies were fished out of a water purification plant at Rustimiyah, south of the capital. They were believed to have been in the water for more than a week.
Meanwhile, Iraqi soldiers foiled a suicide attack on an army base north of Kirkuk, when the driver of a booby-trapped car, who had just dropped off a cameraman to film the attack, was shot as he approached the entrance.
The car then blew up killing both the driver and the cameraman who stood nearby. There were no other injuries.
Diplomat attacked
Turkey's ambassador to Iraq, Unal Cevikoz, survived an ambush on his convoy as it drove through western Baghdad, his embassy said.
Ambassador Cevikoz was travelling back from near the airport to his embassy when gunshots were fired at all three cars in his convoy, a diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
"Nobody was hurt," the diplomat added.
There have been numerous attacks on diplomats in the violence-wracked Iraqi capital with several being kidnapped and killed, including the top Egyptian envoy and two Algerian diplomats.
Oil dispute
Meanwhile, the country's oil minister, Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, who was relieved of his duties last week for speaking out against government ordered fuel price increases, announced that he has resigned.
A government official on December 30 said he had been replaced by deputy prime minister Ahmed Chalabi "because of Mr Bahr al-Ulum's objections to the early introduction of higher petrol prices".
The trebling of petrol prices, ordered in a bid to reduce state subsidies that account for about half the government's budget, has prompted widespread demonstrations around the country.
Meanwhile, Iraq's oil ministry spokesman, has admitted that crude exports had hit a record postwar low.
"This was due to a combination of bad weather in the Gulf" where tankers hook up at terminals to take on crude and to "lack of electricity" to pump the oil, along with insurgent attacks, Assim
Jihad said.