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Bush Urges End to the Impasse Over Writing of Iraq Constitution
Iraqi police and firemen examine the site of a car bombing in Tikrit that killed two policemen, on a day of attacks across the country.
(By Bassem Daham -- Associated Press)
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A U.S. Embassy official said senior U.S. diplomats had concluded a meeting with a political organization in the area and were returning to their offices in a convoy separate from the Humvees when the explosives were detonated. The diplomats were not injured.
A spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party, the country's largest Sunni political party, told news services that the diplomats had left the organization's headquarters a few hundred yards away just before the blast occurred.
In the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad, three policemen were killed shortly after two car bombs detonated near their barracks. No one was killed by the bombs, but as police cleared the area, gunmen in cars shot and killed the officers, a policeman at the scene said.
Two insurgents were also killed in the exchange, according to a man who identified himself as Abu Hafs, 26, a member of the group Al Qaeda in Iraq, which is led by the Jordanian extremist Abu Musab Zarqawi.
Two more policemen were killed in Tikrit, 90 miles north of Baghdad, after they stopped a white Toyota, which detonated when they asked the driver for identification, according to police Col. Ismael Jubouri. At least 12 others were wounded in the attack.
In Baghdad, an Iraqi government spokesman said the cabinet voted to replace the heads of the agencies responsible for Sunni and Shiite affairs. Adnan Dulaimi, who headed the Sunni agency, had recently clashed with members of the constitution committee over how many Sunnis would be added to the body.
Dulaimi had also run afoul of some Sunni leaders who said he had not consulted them sufficiently during negotiations with the constitution committee. If the changes are approved by Talabani, Dulaimi will be replaced by Ahmad Abdul Ghafoor Samarraie, a preacher at western Baghdad's Umm al-Qurra mosque, which is the headquarters of the Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni religious group.
"The change is being made, but it is not politically motivated," said Laith Kubba, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari.
Aldin reported from Samarra and Tikrit, staff writer Peter Baker in Washington and special correspondents Naseer Nouri, Omar Fekeiki, Khalid Saffar and Bassam Sebti in Baghdad contributed to this report.
