At least 39 people were killed in an bloody explosion of violence across Iraq on Monday, including a spate of bombings against buses carrying people to work.
The attacks underlined the parlous security situation in Iraq as agreement on the key defence and interior ministries remained elusive, despite the formation of a new government on May 20, five months after national elections.
Despite repeated assertions that a final decision on the security ministers was imminent, the positions remain unfilled because of bickering among the major political parties.
In the deadliest bus attack on Monday, 11 people were killed and 11 wounded when a bomb tore through a bus carrying Iraqis to work in Khalis, a town about 80km north of Baghdad.
Another eight people were killed and 17 wounded when a car bomb exploded in a predominantly Sunni neighbourhood of Baghdad.
The blast was shortly followed by a second one in the same neighbourhood, but United States soldiers had cordoned off the area, so casualties were not immediately known.
Only a few hours earlier, a bus in the Shi’ite neighbourhood of Kadhimiya, just across the river, was blown up, killing seven people and wounding nine.
In southern Baghdad, another bomb went off inside a commuter minibus, killing two Iraqis and wounding one.
A car bomb also exploded next to a police patrol in the Karrada neighbourhood of Baghdad, near the German embassy, killing three people and wounding five.
Another 11 people were killed in other violence on Monday, highlighting the surge in attacks against ordinary Iraqis trying to go about their daily lives, despite the Sunni-led insurgency and a flare-up of sectarian violence.
Iraqi and US officials have said that local security forces could start taking over responsibility from the US-led foreign troops for at least two provinces by the summer.
Sources close to the dominant conservative Shi’ite United Iraqi Alliance said the delay over choosing the interior minister, who will be a Shi’ite, was due to squabbling between the Shi’ite factions themselves.
Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh, himself a Kurd, told CNN on Sunday that the delicate process of appeasing the four major parties in the national-unity government was causing the delay and appealed for international patience.
”We have committed as part of that compact to include all communities of Iraq, that the ministers of defensc and interior will be agreed to by the main communities,” he said.
”That is a difficult challenge, because in this polarised society there are different views about, particularly, the issue of security,” he added.
On Saturday, President Jalal Talabani, also a Kurd, met with the political parties in an effort to break the deadlock, but his office declined to comment on the results of the talks.
Meanwhile, Parliament, which has been debating its new internal procedures, has erupted in a controversy over allegations by the Kurdish and Shi’ite lawmakers that the Sunni Arab speaker is taking on too much power for himself.
In other violence on Monday, there was a series of incidents across the south of Iraq, mostly drive-by shootings against security personnel.
Though less affected by the largely Sunni-run insurency present in the centre and west of the country, Iraq’s Shi’ite south is plagued by internecine battles between various militias.
”We’ll deal with the issues of militias by laying ahead of us a road map for rehabilitation and reintegration of these people back into public life of Iraqi politics or Iraqi state,” Saleh said.
With their suspected involvement in sectarian killings in Baghdad and civil strife in the main southern city of Basra, the issue of militias has been repeatedly brought up, not just by Iraqi politicians, but by US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad as well.
For his part, new Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has several times since his inauguration promised to address the phenomenon, which is largely restricted to organisations linked to his Shi’ite allies. — AFP
