Baghdad, Iraq – One day after the governor of restive Anbar province escaped an assassination attempt that killed 10 people, a bomber wearing an explosive vest attacked a police recruiting depot Wednesday in Fallujah, the province’s second- largest city, killing at least 16 young men signing up to fight an insurgency that continues to control much of western Iraq.
In Baghdad, the corpses of 34 torture victims were found scattered across the capital.
The bloodshed came as Iraqi legislators in Baghdad, in their first action since selecting the country’s top leadership last month, formed a committee to set the rules and procedures for Iraq’s first full-term Council of Representatives, the new name given to the national parliament.
But legislators delayed any debate of the most divisive issue facing them, changes to the constitution sought by Sunni leaders. They want, among other things, to make it harder to strip Anbar and other Sunni- dominated but oil-poor areas of a sizable share of Iraq’s petroleum revenues.
Sunnis fear the new charter could allow that to happen by allowing Shiites in the south and Kurds in the northeast – where the oil is – to form autonomous confederacies.