Car bombings and shootings in Baghdad on Monday left 15 dead and 100 wounded as Washington stepped up pressure for Shi’ite premier-designate Jawad al-Maliki to form a government and halt Iraq’s slide into a civil war.
Insurgents set off seven car bombs, including a double car bombing at a Baghdad university, security officials said. Five people died in the coordinated attack on the Mustansiriya University that also left 25 wounded.
In another car bomb attack, three people died and another 25 were wounded in the capital’s northern Bab al-Muhaddam neighbourhood, while 15 people were wounded in a further car bombing on Baghdad’s central Tahrir Square.
Two car bombs also went off within minutes of each other in eastern Baghdad, wounding nine. A seventh car bomb exploded in the upscale Mansur neighbourhood, wounding seven.
Six people also died in a series of shootings in south Baghdad’s restive al-Dura district, while one civilian was killed near the restive city of Baquba.
The latest wave of violence came as United States President George Bush stepped up pressure on Maliki to quickly form a national-unity government, with the US military facing one of its bloodiest periods in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.
About 60 US servicemen have been killed in Iraq in April, taking the military’s death toll since the invasion to 2 392, according to an Agence France-Presse count based on Pentagon figures.
More than four months after the December election for Iraq’s first full-term post-Saddam government, political leaders have yet to form a working Cabinet after months of bickering over who would be the next prime minister.
On Saturday the deadlock appeared broken when Maliki was nominated by the dominant Shi’ite bloc, the United Iraq Alliance, as a compromise candidate after the withdrawal of outgoing Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari’s candidacy.
On Sunday Bush telephoned Maliki, as well as re-selected President Jalal Talabani and new Parliament speaker Mahmud Mashhadani, urging them to form a national-unity government.
“I told them they have awesome responsibilities to their people,” Bush said. “They have a responsibility to defeat the terrorists. They have a responsibility to unite their country and I believe they will.”
A heavy US military toll and escalating sectarian bloodshed, coupled with an ongoing insurgency, have emerged as the major obstacles to US hopes of withdrawing its 130 000 troops three years after the invasion.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, also put pressure on Maliki.
“We want him to form, as quickly as possible, a good, strong Cabinet,” Khalilzad said on Sunday. “It is important that there be a Cabinet made up of ministers who will work for all Iraqis and bring Iraqis together.”
Hundreds of Iraqis, mostly Sunni Arabs, have died in the last few months in sectarian violence following the bombing of a Shi’ite shrine in February. Most of the killings have been blamed on Shi’ite militias and forces from Baghdad’s Shi’ite-led interior ministry.
Khalilzad renewed calls for the militias to be dismantled.
“We regard the unauthorised military formation as infrastructure of civil war,” he said. “Military formations must be in the hands of authorised Iraqi government forces.”
Maliki, considered a hardliner, has vowed to rein in militias by integrating them into the security forces. “Arms must be in the hands of the government. There is a law to integrate militias into the security forces,” he said.
Meanwhile, Sunni leaders called for a broad-coalition government.
“We envisage that the new government will integrate all the Parliamentary blocs and unite communities from outside the Parliament also. Only then we can say that we have a national-unity government,” said Zhafer al-Ani, spokesperson for the Sunni National Concord Front. — AFP