U.S. Soldiers, 23 Iraqis Killed in Iraq
04/23/2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Three U.S. soldiers were killed Sunday when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb northwest of the capital, raising to eight the number of Americans killed this weekend in Baghdad area.
More than 20 Iraqis also died in other violence Sunday, including seven who were killed in three explosions that occurred just outside the heavily guarded Green Zone in Baghdad, not far from Iraq’s Defense Ministry.
The violence occurred one day after Iraq’s parliament met inside the Green Zone to elect top government officials in a breakthrough in a long political standoff.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad repeated his call Sunday for the quick creation of a Cabinet comprising “competent” ministers “who will work for all Iraqis and bring Iraqis together.”
Prime Minister-designate Jawad al-Maliki has 30 days to assemble a national unity government of Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish parties that U.S. and Iraqi officials hope can stem sectarian violence that has swelled over the past months during a stalemate over the government.
Parliament also elected a president, two vice presidents, a parliament speaker and two deputies Saturday.
The U.S. military said the three slain soldiers died at 11:30 a.m. but did not give the exact location. Five American soldiers died Saturday in bombings in the southern area of the capital.
At least 2,391 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The three explosions occurred at about 8 a.m. outside a wall of the Green Zone where Iraq’s Defense Ministry is located, killing seven Iraqi civilians and wounding eight, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. Three of the wounded worked at the ministry, an official there said.
At least eight other mortars or rockets exploded at about the same time on the other side of the Tigris River in central Baghdad, without causing injuries, police said.
Police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq said it was hard to identify the dead because the powerful blasts and shrapnel severed their limbs and destroyed their identification cards.
Despite the violence, some Iraqis in Baghdad were encouraged by the legislators’ success in beginning to form a new government after repeated delays following the Dec. 15 election.
“It took too long, but it is a good step on the right direction. It could be a springboard for the stability of this country,” Hussein Farij said in Tahrir Square in central Baghdad.
“We pin a great hope on the formation of a new government. It must heal our country’s many wounds,” Majeed Hameed said.
Khalilzad said Sunday that the U.S. would support al-Maliki and urged the Cabinet that emerges to “govern from the center.”
He also said that militias - which are largely Shiite and blamed by Sunni Arabs for much of the violence - should be disbanded or integrated into Iraqi security forces.
Khalilzad said the unauthorized armed groups were “a serious challenge to stability in Iraq,” calling them “the infrastructure of a civil war.”
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who appeared with Khalilzad at a press conference, promised to “try to implement” a law requiring militias to integrate into the armed forces while ensuring that their loyalty is to the government and not to their former sectarian commanders.
Al-Maliki has begun negotiations on divvying up ministries among the political blocs, Talabani said.
The three main coalition members - the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, the Kurdish alliance and the Sunni Arab National Accordance Council - are expected to largely divide the positions among themselves.
Talabani insisted the process was open to other parties - including the Iraqi List, a secular nationalist party led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, and the Sunni-led National Dialogue Council.
“But if in the end, they want to stay in the opposition .... then that’s their issue,” Talabani said.
The Iraqi Islamic Party, the country’s largest Sunni Arab party, made new allegations about other sectarian killings by death squads, saying the tortured bodies of an unidentified number of Sunni youths from the Azamiyah area recently had turned up at a local morgue.
The party said majority Shiites also were suffering from such killings, but not nearly as many as Sunnis.
“We denounce these horrible crimes against the Iraqi people, and we warn of the consequences of this sectarian cleansing,” the party said in a statement. It urged the new government to stop “the criminal gangs” involved.”
In other developments Sunday:
- The bodies of eight Iraqi men apparently killed in captivity were discovered in two areas of Baghdad: six in Azamiyah and two in Sadr City.
- Gunmen raided a real estate agency in Baghdad and killed its owner, who also was a volunteer for the Iraqi Red Crescent Society relief agency.
- A roadside bomb targeting a convoy carrying a provincial police commander missed him but killed two policemen and wounded another near Beiji, prompting local officials to impose a curfew.
- A drive-by shooting near Kirkuk killed Muhammed Fathi, director of the Ardhul Battra, a Turkish company working on the area’s railways.
- In Fallujah, about 1,000 residents held a funeral procession for Sheik Shaukit al-Kubaisi, a Sunni cleric and imam of a local mosque who was killed by gunmen on Saturday night.
- A roadside bomb killed an Iraqi driver in Mahmoudiya, the U.S. military said. The explosion also killed one Iraqi child and wounded seven others who were playing nearby. U.S. soldiers operating in the area called a medical evacuation unit that rushed the wounded children to a nearby American hospital.
- A roadside bomb exploded in Mosul, missing a U.S. convoy but killing two Iraqi civilians.
- A large fire burned at a government oil and gas complex in northern Iraq on Sunday, but it was not known whether it was caused by an accident or sabotage.