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Iraqis to seek end to stalemate

Iraqis look at burning wreckage in the aftermath of a car bomb explosion Wednesday in Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, Iraq. Car and roadside bombings killed at least 12 people Wednesday. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Nelson Hernandez Washington Post
Iraqis look at burning wreckage in the aftermath of a car bomb explosion Wednesday in Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, Iraq. Car and roadside bombings killed at least 12 people Wednesday. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The Iraqi legislature will meet next week in an attempt to break the months-long deadlock over the formation of a new national government, the acting head of parliament said at a news conference on Wednesday.

Adnan Pachachi, the acting speaker of parliament, said he was ordering lawmakers to meet on Monday in the hope that the deadline would force rival Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish parties to form a government that fairly represented all three groups.

The ethnic and sectarian groups have been at loggerheads since Dec. 15, when a coalition of Shiite religious parties won the most votes in national elections but failed to win a majority in parliament. Though the Shiites won 130 seats in the 275-seat body, they still require the help of at least one of the other groups to select a prime minister.

In the meantime, Sunnis and Shiites have taken their feud to the streets. Since the destruction of a Shiite mosque in Samarra in February, more than 1,000 people, most of them Sunnis, have been abducted and found dead in deserted parts of the capital and elsewhere in the country.

On Wednesday, a car bomb exploded amid a crowd leaving evening prayers at a Shiite mosque in the town of Huwaider, northeast of Baghdad. Ali Khayam, a spokesman for the Diyala provincial police, said the blast killed at least 20 people and wounded 40.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said Iraqi police had discovered the bodies of 11 people in and near Baghdad who had been beheaded and shot. Three roadside and car bomb explosions also killed at least eight people in the capital. Police officials said 14 people were killed in other bombings and shootings around the country.

Three U.S. soldiers were killed Wednesday in two roadside bomb attacks south and east of Baghdad, U.S. military authorities said. The military also announced that a soldier in the 101st Airborne Division, based in northern Iraq, died of noncombat injuries on April 10. Thirty-five U.S. service members have died so far in April, exceeding the total for all of March.