Blasts Hit Baghdad Ice Cream Shop
The evening was sultry and a cluster of Iraqis sat talking outside a neighborhood ice cream shop in western Baghdad. Then a car packed with explosives ripped through the happy scene. As police and residents rushed to help, a second suicide bomber plowed into the chaos.
The attack in Baghdad's Shiite-dominated western al-Shoulah neighborhood was one of two carefully coordinated bombings in Iraq on Sunday that killed at least 21 people, police said. In total, militant violence over the weekend took at least 38 lives, including those of three Americans.
The attacks underscored concerns that continued delays in forming a new government have reinvigorated the insurgency. But after months of bickering, lawmakers said Sunday the country's major Shiite bloc had decided to exclude interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi from negotiations. They said a new cabinet could be announced as early as Monday.
If the forecast proves true, and many similar promises have failed to materialize in past week, Prime Minister-designate Ibrahim al-Jaafari would have broken the political deadlock by shunning further talks with Allawi, the secular Shiite politician who had served as prime minister as the country prepared for elections Jan. 30.
In other developments:
Members of Allawi's Iraqi List, which controls 40 seats in the National Assembly, said his party had not been officially informed that it is being shut out of the government. Allawi loyalists were bidding for at least four ministries, including a senior government post and a deputy premiership.
"I heard from the media, and some of the other assembly members told me about it," lawmaker Hussein Shaalan told AP late Sunday. But he said the party would continue to support the government even if excluded from the Cabinet.
Al-Jaafari's list could be put to parliament as early as Monday, some of his bloc said. Others indicated the Cabinet announcement would be made Tuesday. Many such forecasts have proven wrong so far.
Many Shiites have long resented the secular Allawi, accusing his outgoing administration of having included former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, which brutally repressed the majority Shiites and Kurds.
There had been intense pressure to end the political bickering after a marked recent uptick in insurgent violence that many in Iraq blamed on the continuing political turmoil nearly three months after the country's historic Jan. 30 elections, the first democratic balloting in a half century.
Insurgent attacks had dropped dramatically shortly after the vote, but spiraled upward in recent weeks as the politicians failed to name a government.
In Saddam's hometown of Tikrit on Sunday, two remotely detonated car bombs exploded in quick succession outside a police academy, killing at least six Iraqis and wounding 33, police and a hospital official said. The blasts occurred as recruits were about to leave the station and travel to Jordan for a training, said police Lt. Shalan Allawi.
Insurgents also attacked U.S. forces Sunday. A roadside bomb hit one convoy in eastern Baghdad, killing one American soldier and wounding two, the U.S. military said. Iraqi police said two civilians also were wounded in the attack.
An American sailor was killed Saturday when the Marine convoy he was traveling with was hit by a roadside bomb in Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, the military said.
At least 1,567 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Al Qaeda in Iraq, the country's most feared militant group, claimed responsibility for the Tikrit and eastern Baghdad attacks in statements posted on militant Web sites.
The group also claimed responsibility for a roadside bomb targeting a U.S. patrol near the Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad. The U.S. military said no one was hurt in that attack.
South of the capital, three insurgents were killed Sunday as the roadside bomb they were trying to plant in the town of Mahawil exploded, said police in nearby Hillah.