Bloody Day In Iraq

A string of deadly attacks ripped through the Iraqi capital Sunday, killing at least 12 people and injuring more than 60, police said. Six Shiite shrines were damaged in a series of blasts around the Baqouba area northeast of the capital.

The bombs in the capital included two suicide attacks near a U.S. convoy at the main checkpoint guarding the entrance to the Baghdad International Airport compound. Eighteen people were injured there, police said.

No casualties were immediately reported among the Americans as U.S. forces immediately closed off the area.

Four of the roadside bombs targeted Iraqi police patrols, and the other exploded in an open market.

The violence occurred as Iraq's parliament met in Baghdad, and Prime Minister-designate Nouri al-Maliki met privately with politicians in an effort to form a Cabinet for a new national unity government - one the Americans hope can help reduce sectarian violence and one day make it possible for U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraq.

The attacks on the Shiite shrines near Baqouba began about 7:15 a.m. Saturday when one or more bombs exploded inside the Tameem shrine, according to U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson.

Other attacks occurred throughout the day at five other shrines east of Baqouba, capital of the religiously mixed Diyala province 35 miles northeast of Baghdad and one of the flash points of sectarian tensions.

"These are terrorist attacks meant to divide Iraq's Shiites and Sunni Arabs, but if God is willing, they will not succeed," said Mohammed Hussein, 45, a businessman in Baqouba.

Violence also was reported in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.

A suicide bomber rammed into a U.S. military convoy, killing two Iraqi bystanders, and wounding nine in a neighborhood of Mosul, said police Brig. Abdul-Hamod al-Jibori. U.S. forces closed off the area, and no American casualties were immediately reported. In another part of the city, fighting between insurgents and police killed one policeman and wounded three officers and a militant, said Mosul police chief Wathiq Mohammed.

In other violence, police said:

Gunmen killed two Shiite workers in a bakery in Baghdad.

Suspected insurgents wearing police uniforms kidnapped five Iraqis, four of them brothers, from two homes in Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad. Police also found the bodies of five Iraqis who apparently had been kidnapped and killed by death squads.

The handcuffed bodies of four men who had been shot through the head were found in Baghdad.

The shrine attacks could have significant repercussions - particularly in the Baqouba area, a mixed Sunni Arab-Shiite region where sectarian tensions are running high.

On Feb. 22, bombs heavily damaged the Golden Dome in Samarra, which holds the tomb of Imam Jabir's grandfather. That attack triggered a wave of reprisal attacks against Sunnis, dramatically escalating sectarian tension and pushing the country to the brink of civil war.

"Such acts anger God and hurt the feeling of all honest Iraqis," Shiite cleric Adnan al-Rubaie said in Baqouba on Sunday. "The goal is clear - to ignite a civil strife. God's curse on everybody who tries to create sedition in this country," he said in a telephone interview.

Iraqi lawmakers have been struggling for months to set up the new national unity government, which they hope will calm sectarian and ethnic tensions and undermine the insurgency. But negotiations have been progressing at a glacial pace, leading some lawmakers to complain that the process was being hampered by self-interest and sectarianism.

Al-Maliki has been trying for several weeks to form a new Cabinet by a May 22 constitutional deadline, but the talks have been delayed by disputes among Sunni Arab, Shiite and Kurdish parties over the portfolios they want.

Al-Maliki has the option of filling most Cabinet posts but temporarily heading key ministries such as defense and interior.

As parliament met Sunday in Baghdad to discuss procedural legislative issues on Sunday, the Shiite Fadhila party said it would not reconsider its decision last week to withdraw from the Cabinet negotiations.

The party, which has 15 deputies in the 130-strong United Iraqi Alliance, complained about al-Maliki's failure to give it the country's top oil post, which it held under outgoing Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

On Sunday, Fadhila rejected al-Maliki's request for it to rejoin the Cabinet talks, saying the process was too flawed and that its withdrawal was a matter of principle.
By SINAN SALAHEDDIN