BAGHDAD, Iraq — The young man had something to say.

Inside an Iraqi Army recruiting station yesterday morning, he launched into a rant about unemployment and corruption in the new Iraq.

"Why won't they give us jobs unless we pay someone off?" he said in Iraqi-accented Arabic, according to witnesses. As a crowd of young men drew closer to listen, he blew himself up, killing at least 22 Iraqis and injuring 43.

Insurgents renewed their campaign of violence around the country yesterday. At least 48 were killed and dozens more wounded in a torrent of car bombs, suicide attacks and shootings in the capital, Kirkuk, near Mosul and Fallujah, and along the Syrian border.

Early today, gunmen attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint in Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, killing seven soldiers, battalion commander Col. Abdullah al-Shimmari said.

The recruiting-center attack, the sixth on the former Muthana air base, was tailored to inflict maximum casualties.

According to witnesses, the bomber arrived at the base before 9 a.m., maneuvering past security guards and giant sandbags meant to blunt explosions.

He waited to gather a crowd before he detonated an explosive device packed with tiny metal ball-bearings.

"The man started talking and blaming the officials in the recruiting center," said Mohammad Malik, 25, an army volunteer recovering from wounds at Yarmouk Hospital. "Then the explosion happened. I saw dismembered bodies scattered."

Iraqi security forces and U.S. soldiers, already posted at the base, converged on the scene. Ambulances rushed victims to hospitals. Police sealed off the major street alongside the bombing scene, snarling traffic citywide on the first day of the workweek.

"Everything changed into smoke, dust and bodies of people," Ali Hummadi, 23, said from his hospital bed. "I was worried about a second explosion. Even now, while I am in the hospital, I am afraid that one of the terrorists will enter the hospital to hurt us."

Despite repeated attacks against Iraq's nascent security forces, jobless young men continue to sign up in droves. In Baghdad alone, 15,000 soldiers have been recruited to the Iraqi army and gotten beyond basic training, a U.S. official said.

Bassim Abbas, 27, a father of three who was recovering from shrapnel wounds at the hospital, said he would return to the recruitment center to apply for a job after he healed. "I feel embarrassed when I return to my house and am not able to bring candy for my children," he said.

Malik and two cousins traveled from Hilla in the south to sign up for the army. "We want to find a job and enjoy our lives like young people in other countries," he said.

Other attacks over the weekend demonstrated the insurgency's continued geographical breadth.

Along the Syrian border, a twin suicide car bombing killed at least seven Iraqi customs officials yesterday.

In Kirkuk, another suicide car bomber blew up near a hospital. Four people were killed, but the local political leader whose entourage was the apparent target escaped unharmed.

A remote-controlled car bomb left along a road exploded near a convoy carrying the police chief of Nimrud, 20 miles south of Mosul. Four police officers were killed, but the chief survived.

In Fallujah, a former insurgent bastion overrun by U.S. forces last year, a suicide car bomber attacked a U.S. military convoy, killing one civilian and injuring one Marine. A roadside bomb in Baghdad injured four American soldiers, according to Iraqi police sources.

Two women and seven children related to a Shiite tribal figure in Baghdad's Baladiyat neighborhood were shot dead in their home yesterday morning, an Iraqi police official said. The distraught father blamed the killings on sectarian hatred.

Sectarian tensions simmer throughout the country. On Saturday, police in Baghdad discovered the body of a former general of the Iraqi army. He had been executed the night before, police said, and a note attached to his corpse accused him of participating in Saddam Hussein's 1991 campaign to crush rebellious Shiites in Iraq's south.

Gunmen also killed a relative of Abdelaziz Hakim, leader of the dominant Shiite political party, riddling his car with dozens of bullets yesterday in Baghdad. Amar Hakim, 25, and a friend were driving to work when they were killed.

Another kidnapping victim was found slain yesterday. Ali Shakir, 38, was abducted Thursday in Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. His body was found in the Tigris River near Kut, about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad. Shakir was a former Iraq champion in karate and judo, and head of the Babil branch of Iraq's soccer association.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military announced yesterday that it released an Iranian-American filmmaker who was detained for nearly two months without being charged.

Cyrus Kar, an Iranian-born U.S. citizen from Los Angeles and a former U.S. Navy sailor, was detained by the Iraqi army near Balad on May 17 along with an Iranian cameraman and a taxi driver.

During a search of the taxi they were traveling in, Iraqi soldiers found 35 washing-machine timers, commonly used for detonating roadside bombs, according to the U.S. military.

The cameraman was also released, but the U.S. military continues to hold the taxi driver.

The Associated Press and Chicago Tribune contributed to this report