Baghdad, Iraq – Insurgents using car bombs attacked a Kurdish funeral near Mosul and American soldiers handing out candy to children in Baghdad on Sunday in the worst of a spate of attacks that killed at least 36 Iraqis and wounded 80.
Violence has surged since Iraq’s first-ever Shiite-majority government was approved Thursday.
The attacks capped the bloodiest three- day period in two months.
At least 105 Iraqis and 11 U.S. troops have been killed and 200 Iraqis wounded since Thursday, a violent backdrop to the efforts to fill gaps in the new Cabinet, including the key post of defense minister, with representatives of a resentful Sunni Arab minority.
Leaders of the dominant Shiite political alliance pressed efforts Sunday to complete the new Cabinet ahead of a swearing-in ceremony now set for as early as Tuesday. But they were insisting that no Sunnis with Baathist pasts be given positions of power, a policy that is a clear break with Ayad Allawi, the outgoing prime minister. Allawi, himself a former Baathist, had won American backing for a policy of filling jobs in the military and intelligence services with experienced people, even if they had some links to the deposed regime of Saddam Hussein.
But with the Shiite majority apparently adamant about keeping even reformed former Baathists out of key positions, major questions have arisen as to whether the government can split the insurgency by drawing more moderate elements from the Baathist past into the political process.
Shiite leaders have said they will proceed with the swearing- in of the new government this week even without Sunnis in the vacant ministries, and they have named appointees to two key posts – Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the prime minister-designate, as acting defense minister, and Ahmad Chalabi as acting oil minister.
But a government without Sunnis would be an embarrassing start for the Shiites, who have said they intend to lead a national unity government.
Some positive news emerged Sunday for American and Iraqi forces: the arrests of at least three men thought to be involved in the disappearance of Margaret Hassan, the British- Iraqi head of Iraq operations for CARE International. Her kidnapping and murder last year symbolized the indiscriminate violence that has convulsed Iraq since the American-led invasion that toppled Hussein two years ago.
An Iraqi Interior Ministry official said some of the men arrested had already confessed to abducting and killing Hassan, whose identification and other belongings were found in the home of the suspects.
But the first secretary of the British Embassy in Baghdad, Martin Cronin, said in an interview Sunday evening that he was unaware of any confessions.
The insurgents’ deadliest attack Sunday struck a funeral in Tall Afar, a restive town about halfway between the northern city of Mosul and the Syrian border.
A car bomb obliterated a tent packed with mourners at the funeral of a Kurdish official, in the single deadliest attack since insurgents started bearing down on Iraq’s newly named government late last week.
A Kurdish party official said a car plowed into the funeral tent and exploded, but the U.S. military said it was not a suicide attack. About 25 people were killed and more than 50 wounded, the U.S. military said.
U.S. troops, Iraqi police and ambulances raced to the carnage, but unidentified gunmen blocked the road and fighting broke out, said Khisru Goran, deputy provincial governor.
At least six other car bombs – one of them a suicide attack – and five roadside explosions hit Baghdad on Sunday, killing six Iraqis, wounding more than 20 civilians, six Iraqi police officers and five U.S. soldiers.
In one blast, the attacker failed to fully detonate the explosives inside his car outside an American base in Baghdad, the military said in a statement. U.S. soldiers pulled the driver out of his burning car, and the man later said he was forced to carry out the attack to protect kidnapped family members, according to a statement.
Five more explosions rocked the capital late Sunday. Two roadside bombs detonated near a small amusement park in central Baghdad, killing one Iraqi and wounding two others, while two more roadside bombs targeting police patrols in western Baghdad wounded six officers, they said.
Police had no immediate information on the fifth blast.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Deadly start
At least 105 Iraqis and 11 U.S. soldiers have been killed since Iraq named its new government Thursday:
Iraqis GIs
Thursday 5 5
Friday 47 5
Saturday 17 1
Sunday 36 –
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS