At 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, several hours before legislators began to arrive at
the Green Zone, suspected insurgents set off a bomb in a Shiite district of
Baghdad, killing 19 people and wounding 58, police said. The blast occurred near
a food stand in Sadr City where men gather to wait for jobs as day laborers,
police Maj. Hashim al-Yaser said.
"It was a huge explosion," said Mohammed Hamid, who works in a bakery in the
area. "We carried many of the injured to ambulances and helped remove the
bodies."
Police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said 19 people were killed and 58
wounded. Many of the injured were rushed to nearby Imam Ali Hospital, where
hallways were filled with doctors and nurses treating and bandaging the wounded.
Sadr City is the stronghold of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who
operates a powerful militia, one of many that exist in the capital outside the
control of the government. Al-Maliki hopes to disband such militias and
integrate them into the country's military and police forces as a way of
reducing violence.
On Saturday, a suicide car bomber killed at least five people and injured 10
in an attack on a police station in the western border town of Qaim, the head of
the local hospital said.
Elsewhere, police also found the bodies of 19 people who apparently had been
kidnapped and tortured, four in Baghdad and 15 in Musayyib, about 40 miles south
of the capital. It was unclear when the victims in Musayyib had been killed and
brought to a morgue, which prepared to bury them on Saturday, police said.
However, all 19 bodies appeared to be victims of death squads that kidnap and
kill hundreds of people in Iraq, to settle personal vendettas, because of
sectarian hatred, or in an effort to win ransoms.
Meanwhile, Iraqis waited to see who would be in their new government and how
effective it would be at reducing violence and solving many other problems in
the country, including frequent power outages in homes and businesses.
On Friday, al-Maliki said he would temporarily fill two posts in the new
cabinet, the defense and the interior ministries, because of disputes over the
portfolios.
Minority Sunni Arabs want the Defense Ministry, which runs the army; the
majority Shiites want the Interior Ministry, which controls the police.
In the interim, deputy parliament speaker Khalid al-Attiyah told The
Associated Press, al-Maliki will serve as interior minister and Salam Zikam Ali
al-Zubaie, a Sunni Arab, will head the Defense Ministry. He said they would
serve for a week to allow for an agreement on permanent appointments.
Al-Zubaie is the Sunni nominee for deputy premier, and his political group is
part of the main Sunni Arab coalition, the Iraqi Accordance Front.
The Cabinet list, its members or its number, were not made public ahead of
time. It remained unclear what would happen if any nominee is rejected, though
it was unlikely al-Maliki would risk presenting a deal lawmakers would not
approve.
Al-Maliki did not say when the interior and defense ministers would be chosen
but did say the posts would go to people "well known as independents, honest,
not loyal to any militia or the equivalent."
Meanwhile, the second-highest ranking U.S. general in Iraq said the key to
reducing violence in Iraq was to ensure that the government can revive the
economy.
"I honestly believe that as this government begins work on the policies that
will be required to put people to work and make use of the vast resources of
Iraq that you're going to see a decrease in violence," Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli,
commander of Multinational Corps Iraq, told reporters in Washington.
