Gunmen kill 21 in sectarian attack near Baghdad, sparing 4 Sunni Arabs; 9 die in Basra gunfight

(AP) Gunmen dragged passengers off three minibuses northeast of Baghdad early Sunday and killed 21 people, including a dozen students. Authorities said the attackers spared four Sunni Arabs in one of Iraq's worst sectarian atrocities in recent weeks.

In Qara Tappah, Mayor Serwan Shokir said one person also was wounded in the attack on buses carrying 26 people from his town to Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. The 12 slain high school and college students were apparently going to Baqouba to take exams.

Nineteen of the dead were ethnic Turkomen and two were Kurds. The four Sunni Arabs spared by the gunmen were being questioned by police, Shokir said.

The attack occurred on the outskirts of Diyala province, an ethnically mixed region that in recent weeks has become a powder keg of sectarian violence, including assaults against Sunni and Shiite shrines.

Sectarian fighting also flared in Iraq' south, where a gunbattle broke out when police surrounded a Sunni mosque in the predominantly Shiite city of Basra. At least nine people died in the clash, which came a day after a suicide car bomber killed 28 people and wounded 62 at Basra's biggest outdoor market.

The bloodshed dealt another blow to efforts by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to calm a recent surge in sectarian violence in Basra, which is Iraq's second largest city and is the main city in the country's rich southern oil region.

A parliament session was postponed Sunday after al-Maliki again failed to reach consensus on candidates to head the crucial ministries that run Iraq's military and police. He had promised to present his own nominees to the 275-member parliament if there wasn't agreement among the ethnic, religious and secular political parties, but was apparently persuaded to wait.

Deputy Parliament Speaker Khalid al-Atiya, a Shiite, said that due to the large number of candidates and failure to reach agreement, the parties decided "to give the prime minister another chance to have more negotiations."

Al-Maliki and one of his deputes have staffed the posts of defense, interior and minister of state for national security since his government of national unity took office two weeks ago.

Filling the posts is a key step for al-Maliki's plan for Iraqi forces to take control of security from U.S.-led troops in 18 months.

In an effort to address the sectarian divide, the Interior Ministry post, which oversees police, is to go to a Shiite, while the Defense Ministry and control of the army is earmarked for a Sunni Arab.

There were conflicting reports Sunday over the fate of four Russian diplomats kidnapped in Baghdad.

An Interior Ministry spokesman, Brig. Adnan Abudel Rahman, denied a report that the Russians had been freed Saturday in a raid by Iraqi commandos. That report had come earlier from a senior ministry official, Lt. Colonel Falah al-Mohamedawi.

In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry said Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov that Iraq's government was taking "active efforts to ensure the quickest release of four abducted Russian embassy workers."

It said Zebari underlined that Iraq views "Russia as a friendly nation, and the Iraqi society doesn't remain indifferent to the tragic incident and its representatives were ready to help."

The four Russian diplomatic workers were kidnapped Saturday by gunmen who attacked an embassy car just after noon in Baghdad, killing one Russian. Russia's Foreign Ministry identified the slain man as Vitaly Vitalyevich Titov, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.

At least 439 foreigners including diplomats have been kidnapped in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion three years ago, according to figures provided earlier this month by a U.S. anti-kidnapping task force. Russia opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and has no troops here.

The gunbattle in Basra erupted at one Sunni mosque as police stormed four mosques hours after the suicide car bombing.

Police officials said officers surrounded the al-Arab mosque just after midnight after being tipped that militants were hiding there and gunmen opened fire from within. Police said they also found two vehicles packed with explosives near the mosque.

Nine people were killed in the firefight and six terror suspects were arrested, police said, adding that part of the mosque was damaged and burned.

A hard-line Sunni organization in Basra, the influential Sunni Arab Association of Muslim Scholars, said the nine people killed had gone to the mosque to protect it after earlier raids on the other mosques.

Al-Maliki had declared a state of emergency in Basra last week, vowing to crack down with an "iron fist" on rival gangs battling each other for power.

In another incident Sunday, gunmen in a car opened the fire on a minibus carrying telecommunications employees to work in an area near the Shiite slum of Sadr City, killing four and wounding two, police Col. Hassan Challoub said.

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Associated Press writers Qais al-Bashir, Sinan Salaheddin, Kim Gamel and Patrick Quinn contributed to this report.