Bomb Rips Through Baghdad Market

At Least 36 Killed As Iraq Teeters On The Brink Of Civil War

(CBS/AP)  A bomb ripped through a vegetable market in a Shiite section of Baghdad and a leading Sunni politician escaped an attack on his convoy Thursday as at least 36 people were killed in unrelenting violence pushing Iraq toward civil war.

In response to the violence, the government announced Thursday a one-day ban on private vehicles in Baghdad and its outskirts. The ban takes effect when the overnight curfew ends at 6 a.m. Friday and will last until 4 p.m. Friday, according to a statement issued by the prime minister's office. Police and army were instructed to seal off the capital and seize any private vehicles that defy the ban.

The move is designed to avert attacks on Friday, when Muslims attend the most important prayer service of the week.

Iraq's political crisis has also deepened. Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari canceled a meeting with Iraq's top political leaders after they agreed to mount a campaign to deny him another term in a bid to jump-start stalled talks on a new government drawing in the country's main ethnic and religious blocs.

The talks on a new government broke down last week when Sunni parties pulled out in protest against attacks on Sunni mosques triggered by the Feb. 22 bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in the central city of Samarra. Hundreds were killed in the sectarian fury that followed.

They included 45 Sunni preachers and mosque employees, according to Sheik Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samaraie, head of the government's Sunni Endowment, which takes care of Sunni mosques and religious shrines.

He told a news conference Thursday that 37 Sunni mosques were destroyed and 86 damaged by grenade, rocket or gun fire. Six others remained in the hands of Shiite militiamen, he said. U.S. military officials put the figures much lower.

Yet another Sunni cleric was gunned down as he left a mosque after dawn prayers Thursday in Basra, in the southern Shiite heartland. It was not clear whether al-Samaraie included the cleric in his count.

In other developments:

The former U.N. human rights chief for Iraq said abuses are as bad now as they were under Saddam Hussein. "Under Saddam, if you agreed to forego your basic right to freedom of expression and thought, you were physically more or less OK," said John Pace, who last month left his post as at the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq. "But now, no. Here, you have a primitive, chaotic situation where anybody can do anything they want to anyone."

A bomb exploded in a minibus traveling through Sadr City, a Shiite ghetto in east Baghdad, killing five people and wounding 10, police said. A fourth device went off as Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry commandos drove through the mostly Sunni Amariyah neighborhood in western Baghdad, killing one of them and injuring three, police said.

In court Wednesday, Saddam Hussein took sole responsibility for ordering the trial of 148 Shiites who were eventually executed in the 1980s. But he insisted this was no crime as they were suspected of participating in an assassination plot against him. The trial was then adjourned until March 12.

Bombings, gunfire and mortar blasts killed 47 more people Wednesday. A U.S. soldier assigned to Multinational Division-Baghdad died in a non-combat related incident Wednesday, the military said.

President Bush decried the latest surge in sectarian violence Tuesday and said that for Iraqis "the choice is chaos or unity." "The people of Iraq and their leaders must make a choice," Mr. Bush said before leaving for a trip to South Asia. "The choice is chaos or unity, the choice is a free society, or a society dictated by evil people who would kill innocents."

At mid-afternoon Thursday a convoy carrying bodyguards assigned to Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi, also a Sunni, was hit in the Ghazaliyah neighborhood in west Baghdad, killing one of the guards and wounding five. Al-Dulaimi was not in the convoy. Earlier and in the same neighborhood, gunmen attacked a car in which Adnan al-Dulaimi, leader of the Sunni Iraqi National Accord, had been riding before it had a flat tire and was forced to stop.

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©MMVI CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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