Baghdad bombs kill 30, rural Shi'ite shrines wrecked

BAGHDAD - Bombs killed 30 people in Baghdad today and sectarian attacks wrecked six Shi'ite shrines in a rural area, adding to pressure on Iraq's rival leaders to agree on the formation of a unity government.

With a week left for Prime Minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki to meet a constitutional deadline to present a broad-based coalition Washington hopes will avert a slide towards civil war, a series of blasts hit Baghdad. Two suicide bombers in cars killed 14 Iraqis at the entrance to Baghdad airport.

A roadside bomb later killed two US soldiers in the city.

Violence also flared in southern Iraq where two British soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack in Basra, Iraq's second city. Last week, a British military helicopter came down there, possibly hit by a rocket, killing five troops and sparking clashes between British forces and local militias.

US and Iraqi officials have said the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is stepping up a campaign to target majority Shi'ites in and around Baghdad in an attempt to provoke retaliatory attacks against minority Sunnis, dominant under Saddam Hussein, and ignite all-out sectarian warfare.

There were more signs of factional wrangling over key posts delaying the formation of the government. Maliki, a Shi'ite Islamist, has repeatedly expressed confidence he would put together a cabinet of Shi'ites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds well within his 30-day deadline. He is now running it close.

Witnesses near Baghdad's airport saw three burnt out trucks and a car in a car park used by Iraqi civilians.

The sprawling zone contains the civilian airport and a number of palaces once used by Saddam Hussein and now housing military bases, among them the US military headquarters.

"This was not an attack on the compound," the US military said. "It targeted Iraqis congregated in a parking lot."

No one was hurt in the blasts that destroyed small shrines in a rural area north of Baghdad yesterday, the latest in a string of sectarian attacks since bombs in February wrecked a major Shi'ite shrine in Samarra and sparked communal bloodshed.

Two of the blasts in Wajihiya, a religiously mixed village 30km east of the regional capital Baquba, reduced to rubble the one-room building attached to the shrine dedicated to Abdullah bin Ali al-Hadi, a noted cleric related to the two Shi'ite imams commemorated at the Golden Mosque in Samarra.

Residents picked tattered religious banners and a torn Koran from the rubble of the building. The tomb was not damaged.

"People usually visit the tomb on Saturdays. The attacks took place after I left the shrine at night. The first bomb hit at 9pm. The second one came 10 minutes later," one woman said.

Five shrines were destroyed in Wajihiya. A sixth on a dirt road outside the village was also blown up, residents said.

"This is a quiet place. We live in harmony with each other," local man Faez Abbas, 26, said, adding that Sunnis also prayed at the shrines -- a common practice in Iraq, although shrines are most often set up by Shi'ites.

Disputes over the key posts of interior, defence and oil are complicating efforts by Maliki to form a cabinet.

Bahaa al-Araji, a legislator from a rival Shi'ite group within Maliki's Alliance bloc, said that if no agreement were reached before the deadline, Maliki himself would fill in temporarily the ministries of interior and defence.

Sunni leaders have accused the Shi'ite-run Interior Ministry of running death squads, and Maliki has said he will appoint an independent with no ties to armed militias to the post.

The US ambassador has also said he wants a "non-sectarian" interior minister. Some Shi'ite officials have accused Washington of interfering in the negotiations.

As parliament met, a small but influential Shi'ite party within the Alliance that has been complicating Maliki's task renewed its rejection of his offers. The Fadhila party is struggling to keep control of the Oil Ministry.

Negotiators said today that Hussain al-Shahristani, a prominent Islamist and nuclear physicist once jailed and tortured under Saddam, was increasingly likely to get the job.

In other deadly blasts in Baghdad, six people including three policemen were killed by a bomb targeting a police patrol. Four people were killed and five wounded when a bomb aimed at an Iraqi police convoy went off in northeastern Baghdad.

Near the southern holy Shi'ite city of Kerbala, police found the bodies of five people, blindfolded, bound and with gun shots. Separately, the bodies of four brothers who worked in a humanitarian organisation were found beheaded also in Kerbala.

- REUTERS