Bomb Rips Through Baghdad Market
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:
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.
Adnan Al-Dulaimi had sped away in another car in the motorcade and said he was not aware of the attack until he reached his office. Security men who stayed with the disabled car were caught in the subsequent attack that killed one and wounded five. "There is a big conspiracy that wants to destroy Iraq," Adnan al-Dulaimi told Al-Jazeera television.
The explosion during the busy morning shopping period at a vegetable market in Baghdad's southeastern Zafaraniyah neighborhood killed at least eight people and wounded 14, said police Lt. Bilal Ali Majid. Police evacuated the market after finding a second bomb.
Earlier, gunmen attacked a joint police-army checkpoint about 20 miles north of Samarra, killing six soldiers and four policemen, police said. The attackers set fire to the bodies before fleeing the area, he said.
Four more policemen were killed when gunmen intercepted they vehicle in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, said police Brig. Abdel Hamid al-Jbouri. And police found the bodies of five men shot in and around Baghdad.
As sectarian killing surged last week, the U.S. 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division was put on alert in neighboring Kuwait for a possible move into Iraq, the military said. But no orders were given for such a move.
The violence has complicated talks to form a broad-based government, which U.S. officials consider essential to cut support for insurgents among the Sunni-Arab minority so coalition forces can start drawing down later this year.
Al-Jaafari's office gave no reason for calling off Thursday's meeting with major political parties.
"The cancellation of this meeting is a regrettable thing because such meetings are essential under the current situation," said Mahmoud Othman, a leading figure in Parliament's Kurdish bloc.
On Wednesday, leaders of three parties, including Sunnis, Kurds and the secularists of ex-Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, agreed to ask the main Shiite bloc to withdraw al-Jaafari's nomination for prime minister and put forward another candidate. Officials of all three groups confirmed the plan but spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
The Shiites won 130 of Parliament's 275 seats in December elections, giving them the largest bloc of lawmakers and the first chance to form a government, but not enough to govern without partners.
Al-Jaafari won the nomination by a single vote in a Feb. 12 ballot among Shiite lawmakers, defeating Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi in large part due to the support of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
"The plan for those terrorist groups to instigate a civil war is not successful and it won't be successful," said Iraq's Minister of Public Works, Nisreen Berwari, in an interview with CBS News Up to the Minute contributor Frank Ucciardo. "At the end of the day, there is no major division of differences between Iraqi groups."