Insurgents "are cowards," said Nabeel Hassan, another laborer. "They cannot face these men man-to-man, so they show us how brave they are by killing these poor men who run all day to feed their families.''
In Tuz Khormato, south of the northern city of Kirkuk, explosives loaded into a pickup truck detonated, killing five people outside a city council office, said police Lt. Gen. Sarhat Qader, according to the Associated Press. A mortar round hit a house in Kirkuk, killing two people, police told the AP.
The day's violence began with gunmen killing a national security official, Maj. Gen. Wael Rubaei, as he drove to work in Baghdad. His driver also was killed. Officials of the new government and security forces have been frequent targets of assassination.
U.S. and Iraqi troops detained about 300 people in what a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Clifford Kent, called the largest combined operation by the two countries' forces to date. The overnight sweeps targeted neighborhoods around the U.S.-run prison at Abu Ghraib and near the road to Baghdad's main airport. Both areas have been the scene of repeated insurgent attacks.
Jafari's government took to the airwaves to show that it was fighting back against insurgents.
State TV aired nearly an hour of videotape from a capital murder trial in the southern city of Kut at which three alleged members of the Ansar al-Sunna insurgent group were sentenced to death for killing at least three policemen. Spectators in the courtroom held up photographs of the men's alleged victims. The stooped, scarved mother of one of those killed asked the court to convict and execute the accused. The proceedings took place Sunday.
The three men are the first suspected insurgents to face the death penalty since Hussein fell. Many Iraqi leaders have been adamant about retaining the death penalty to ensure that Hussein would be executed if convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity in a trial expected this year.
A government-made music video on state TV showed one of Iraq's most feared police units in action, catching insurgents, digging up arms caches and patrolling the streets. Sunni leaders accuse the unit, the Wolf Brigade, of torture and summary killings of Sunni clerics and others.
Lawmakers, meanwhile, were expected to elect a commission Tuesday to start drafting a new constitution, which is the Jafari government's most important mandate. Lawmakers in the 275-seat National Assembly are to choose between a Shiite and a Kurd to chair the commission. Shiite politicians have insisted that a Shiite be picked.
Special correspondents Dlovan Brwari in Mosul and Omar Fekeiki in Baghdad contributed to this report.
