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Car Blasts Kill Dozens in Baghdad
A 4-year-old Iraqi girl injured in a blast is consoled by her mother at a Baghdad hospital as her grandfather prays. As violence flared, politicians agreed to daily talks on a new government.
(By Hadi Mizban -- Associated Press)
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U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has urged the parties to form a coalition government quickly to help stanch sectarian bloodshed.
"The situation is such that there is a degree of vacuum in authority in the current caretaker government," Khalilzad said after attending the meeting, which preceded the blasts in Sadr City. "There is continuous effort by the terrorists to promote sectarian conflict, and therefore in order to deal with the threat, there is a need on an urgent basis to form a government of national unity."
The political development came as Iraq's defense and interior ministers announced that their agencies would begin conducting security raids jointly to raise public confidence that the Shiite-led Interior Ministry was not harboring death squads that target Sunni Arabs and their mosques, as Sunni leaders have alleged.
Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, a Shiite, and Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi, a Sunni, also unveiled a new policy requiring all suspects arrested by security forces to be presented in court within three days.
The interior minister also announced preliminary results from an investigation of the Samarra mosque bombing last month. He said 20 men had entered the shrine at 8 p.m. and worked until 5:40 a.m. the next morning, strategically placing about 475 pounds of explosives throughout the mosque.
The official also said the bombers set off the explosives by remote control.
The trial of Hussein and his seven co-defendants resumed Sunday, with three of the lesser defendants taking the stand officially for the first time. Hussein and the other defendants are being tried in the killing of 148 people from the town of Dujail, about 35 miles north of Baghdad, after an assassination attempt there against Hussein in 1982.
The three -- Mizher Abdullah Ruweid, his father, Abdullah Kadhim Ruweid, and Ali Daeem Ali, all former local Baath Party officials -- denied any role in the killings.
Special correspondent Naseer Nouri contributed to this report.
