BAGHDAD, April 24 -- Iraq's prime minister-designate, Ibrahim Jafari, increased efforts to form a new government Sunday, as insurgents pressed their campaign of violence with two lethal bombing operations, including one in Baghdad, that left at least 21 Iraqis dead and scores more injured.
Late Sunday afternoon, a car bomb exploded outside an ice cream shop in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of al-Shoulah, a poor and predominantly Shiite Muslim district. As people rushed to assist victims in the crowded market area, a second bomb detonated, killing at least 15 people and injuring 40, according to police and television reports.
In another double bombing, a technique increasingly employed by the insurgents, suicide bombers detonated a pair of explosive-laden cars at a police academy in Tikrit as recruits were leaving for training in Jordan. The bombings killed six policemen and wounded 35 people, most of them policemen, according to hospital officials.
"We started shooting from all the sides toward him, and that is why he blew himself up at the first barrier," policeman Musab Qais Ahmed, 25, said of the first Tikrit bomber, who was driving a gray Opel. "When we were so busy evacuating the wounded and killed people, a white Mazda came 30 minutes after the first explosion. He was not able to reach the first barrier."
Azhar Shakir, 35, who was being treated for burns on his left arm, said he had just dropped off his brother at the academy and was returning to his car when "suddenly I felt I am in the middle of hell. I did not hear anything except people shouting 'Allahu Akbar!' " -- or "God is great" -- "and 'Help, help!' What do these people want from the police? That is not endurable anymore."
Also Sunday, a U.S. sailor and soldier were killed in separate incidents west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
The public's sense that the violence is becoming unendurable has increased pressure on Iraq's haggling politicians to form a government and fulfill the expectations created by Iraq's landmark democratic elections in January.
Against this backdrop, Jafari has been holding marathon meetings to finalize his 32-member cabinet with the aim of presenting it to parliament within the next two days, several political sources said. While some officials close to Jafari said he might do so Monday, other politicians involved in the talks said that was too optimistic.
In a significant step toward closing a deal, however, Jafari ended weeks of discussions over the terms under which interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's party would join the new government, several sources said. Jafari and his predominantly Shiite Muslim political coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, also negotiated late into Sunday night with Sunni leaders to determine which positions they might hold in his cabinet.
Separately, an alliance source said Jafari has been negotiating with factions in his own coalition that are jostling to have their candidates included in the cabinet.
The alliance, which holds a slight parliamentary majority of about 140 seats, has taken about 17 cabinet seats, including the ministries of oil and interior, which controls the police. The Kurds, with the second largest parliamentary bloc of 75 seats, will fill seven or eight cabinet posts, including foreign affairs and planning.
The alliance reached agreement with the Kurds on the general shape of the government weeks ago. But complications developed when some Kurdish politicians began lobbying to include Allawi in the government. They were eager to have the secular Shiite figure as a counterweight to the alliance's religiously oriented leaders, who include Jafari.
"We were hoping that the alliance would make a credible offer to Allawi's [party], but somehow the factor of time took over," said one politician close to the talks. He said the alliance offered only two ministries to Allawi's party, which controls 40 seats in parliament. It had asked for four, including defense.
"The Kurds are pushing forward" to include Allawi's party, but the alliance "wants to exclude us from the political procedures," said a spokesman for Allawi, Thaer Naqib.
Nevertheless, Allawi would support the new government "because we don't want to stop the procedure of democracy," Naqib said. "We are preparing ourselves for the next election."
The Sunnis, meanwhile, have asked for seven cabinet posts. But Ali Dabbagh, a spokesman for the alliance, predicted that they will get from four to six, including defense, women's affairs, cultural affairs and industry.
One unsettled issue, political sources said, was how many deputy prime ministers Jafari would appoint and what authority they would have. There are likely to be at least three: Ahmed Chalabi, a Shiite; Rowsch Shaways, a Kurd; and a Sunni who has yet to be named.
In another development, the U.S. military announced that it had arrested four more suspects in the missile attack on a civilian helicopter Thursday. All 11 people aboard the chartered Mi-8 helicopter, including six American security contractors, were killed; one of them, the Bulgarian pilot who survived the attack, was later shot to death by insurgents.
Special correspondents Bassam Sebti, Naseer Nouri and Khalid Saffar in Baghdad and Salih Saif Alden in Tikrit contributed to this report.
