IRAQ: A wave of bomb attacks killed at least 30 people in Baghdad yesterday in more of the bloody sectarian violence that has pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.
A car bomb killed 25 people in mainly Shia east Baghdad, one of three such attacks in the capital. After dark, mortar rounds shook the city centre and residents reported a gun battle around a Sunni mosque in the south of the capital.
A convoy of unarmed police recruits was ambushed near the northern city of Kirkuk, police said. Four were killed and eight wounded, while 22 survived a brief abduction by the gunmen.
Minority Sunni Arab rebels have massacred similar groups before, highlighting weaknesses in the new, US-trained forces.
The Shia-led interim government has ordered thousands of police and its few tanks onto the streets of Baghdad, backed up by US troops, but their effectiveness is untested and their loyalties questionable in the face of myriad sectarian militias.
Prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari was under new pressure as it emerged he was warned of attacks on Shia shrines two weeks before the demolition of the Golden Mosque in Samarra by bombers who spent all night planting charges and left guards unharmed.
US and Iraqi leaders accuse Sunni al-Qaeda of bombing the shrine to provoke Shias into a civil war that would wreck US hopes of stability and so of withdrawing its troops. Some Sunnis say Iranian-backed Shias did it to justify reprisals.
Scenting weakness as concerned US officials step up calls on the Shias to accept Sunnis in a national unity coalition, Sunni, Kurdish and secular political leaders were collaborating to try to unseat Mr al-Jaafari as the Shias' choice as premier.
"If Jaafari remains . . . then there will be no [ national unity] government," one senior Iraqi politician said. Eleven weeks after Washington trumpeted a peaceful election that saw most Sunnis elect representatives to the US-backed parliament for the first time, disarray is evident. Iraqi officials say it will take months more to form a new coalition.
Mr al-Jaafari, on a visit to Turkey that drew pointed and public criticism from Iraq's Kurdish president, said: "The government will be set up soon. The government will be broad based." After a year running the interim government, however, many accuse him of being ineffectual and both Sunni leaders and US officials have raised concerns about his ties to Shia Iran.
The crisis threatens turmoil across the Middle East and has jeopardised President George Bush's hopes of pulling out some US forces before congressional elections in November.
After a poll showed his popularity at a new low, Mr Bush said Iraqis faced a choice between "chaos or unity". But he dismissed talk of civil war when asked how US troops would respond.