Baghdad, Iraq – Iraq’s political leaders emerged Thursday from three days of crisis talks with a new alliance that seeks to save the crumbling U.S.- backed government. But the reshaped power bloc included no Sunnis and immediately raised questions about its legitimacy as a unifying force.
The political gambit came as teams in northern Iraq tallied the grim figures from the deadliest wave of suicide attacks of the war and – in a rare moment of joy since Tuesday’s devastation – pulled four children alive from the rubble.
“We didn’t hear them calling out for help until moments before a bulldozer would have killed them as it cleared the rubble,” said Saad Muhanad, a municipal council member in the Qahtaniya region, where four bomb-laden trucks turned clay and stone homes into tombs for hundreds belonging to a small religious group considered infidels by hard-line Muslims.
Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said Thursday that at least 400 were dead – apparently all members of the Yazidi sect.
No other details about the rescued children were known. The freed youngsters began running through the streets begging for food and water.
“In a while, some of their families came and took them away,” said Muhanad.
The mayor of the region pleaded for help, meanwhile, saying an even larger tragedy loomed if the shattered communities did not get food, water and medicine soon.
In Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki hailed the political agreement as a first step toward unblocking the paralysis that has gripped his Shiite-dominated government since it first took power in May 2006.
The new Shiite-Kurdish coalition will retain a majority in parliament – 181 of the 275 seats – and apparently has a clear path to pass legislation demanded by the Bush administration, including a law on sharing Iraq’s oil wealth among Iraqi groups and returning some Saddam Hussein-era officials purged under earlier policies.
In central Baghdad, a car bomb struck a parking garage during the morning rush hour, killing at least nine people and wounding 17, police said.
The U.S. military said two soldiers died Wednesday and six were wounded in fighting north of Baghdad. One soldier died Thursday in Baghdad of noncombat causes.
