Iraq blasts kill 37 more

BAGHDAD, Iraq – At least nine bombs exploded in the Iraqi capital Sunday, killing 35 Iraqis and two U.S. soldiers as the country’s politicians wrangled over the rules and composition of their new government.

The string of attacks in Baghdad, the bloodiest in weeks, was accompanied by reports of violence in other areas: Two British soldiers were killed Saturday night when their armored vehicle struck a roadside bomb near Basra in southern Iraq, British military authorities said, and attackers bombed five Shiite Muslim shrines in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad.

The attacks came as the Iraqi parliament met for the third time since choosing Nouri al-Maliki, a member of the leading Shiite coalition of parties, as its prime minister-designate. Al-Maliki was given until May 22 to choose his cabinet. Though some politicians have said for the past several days that an announcement is imminent, others say there are still considerable obstacles to assembling a government that would satisfy the country’s Shiite, Kurd, Sunni Arab and secular parties.

U.S. officials and military leaders have held out hope that the formation of a government that united these groups would calm the situation in the country, quelling the kind of violence that erupted Sunday.

In the deadliest attack, two suicide bombers in cars loaded with explosives blew themselves up among people gathered in a large, dirt parking lot just outside the airport, killing 14 Iraqis, U.S. military authorities said in a statement.

The parking lot is near a well-known statue of Abbas bin Firnas, a 9th century Arab philosopher who dreamed that men would someday fly. After the explosion, the area was littered with burned-out and damaged cars and bodies.

The lot was guarded until recently by Global Security, a private security company. U.S. troops have also reduced their presence in the area.

“I was expecting this, because Global Security moved the checkpoint away and left this parking lot uncontrolled,” said Thair Abdulqadir, an airport employee.

In another attack near the airport, five Iraqis were killed by a suicide bomber at a checkpoint along the Baghdad airport road, police said.

Two suicide bombers were driving a car loaded with explosives when one of them stepped out of the car to distract the soldiers while the other one detonated the bomb, said Col. Sami Hassan, an Interior Ministry spokesman.

Bombs killed another 16 people in Baghdad, according to police and news reports. The two U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb Sunday evening in eastern Baghdad, military authorities said in a statement.

Outside the capital, a roadside bomb hit the convoy of Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, killing three of his bodyguards, police Brig. Gen. Abbas Ameen said. Zebari was not in the convoy, Ameen said.

In restive Diyala province, attackers also bombed five small Shiite shrines near Baquoba, 35 miles northeast of the capital, police said. The attacks began late Saturday night when a bomb exploded at the Imam Abdullah shrine in Wajihiya, a town northeast of Baquoba. Four other shrines in the area were demolished by bombs Sunday morning. Nobody died in the attacks, but the shrines were reduced to rubble, police said.

Attackers have aggressively targeted Shiite mosques in Baquoba in recent weeks, causing many to fear that tensions between Shiites and Sunni Arabs in the area will boil over into open violence. The bombing of another shrine in February, the Golden Mosque in Samarra, nearly pitched the country into civil war.

“What these groups are trying to do in bombing shrines is to provoke a sectarian conflict that would lead to a civil war,” said Fuad al-Amiri, a cleric at a Shiite mosque in Baquoba. “They don’t want Iraq to stabilize.”

But the event that is supposed to stabilize Iraq – the formation of a government that unites the squabbling factions – remains just out of reach, politicians said after an inconclusive parliament meeting where members debated their bylaws.

Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni leader, said in an interview on Al-Jazeera television that in order to meet the deadline, al-Maliki might announce his cabinet choices by the end of the week, keeping those most difficult to fill, the defense and interior ministries, vacant until he could resolve thorny political questions associated with them.

Sunni leaders have insisted on filling the defense ministry, and would like to see the interior ministry go to a nonsectarian candidate.

“For us, this is a matter of life and death,” al-Hashimi said. “The security of Iraq depends on those two ministries.”

A secular politician, Ayad Jamal Aldin, said the announcement of a new government “may take a week” and warned that it might not be the panacea for Iraq’s problems.

“I think that things will not calm down easily even after the formation of a government, but in general there is progress in the political situation,” he said. “However, the political situation has become very sectarian. The democracy has become a democracy of sects.”