IRAQ: Bombs killed dozens of people in Iraq yesterday, adding to pressure on rival factions in the country's new coalition government to agree on interior and defence ministers who can tackle the relentless violence.
A series of separate attacks claimed at least 47 lives, most of them in Baghdad.
In the bloodiest incident, a car bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol killed 12 people, mostly students, in a Sunni Arab area of northern Baghdad, police said. A roadside bomb killed at least eight people in a Shia area.
Elsewhere, 11 people were killed when a bomb planted on a bus taking labourers to work went off in Khalis 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad.
"What wrong had they done?" a middle-aged man asked as he inspected the blood-stained bus.
An Iranian exiled opposition group said the dead were employees travelling to its base in the area.
Noting Iran's foreign minister was in Baghdad last week, the People's Mujahideen Organisation pointed the finger at Tehran and also blamed its Shia Islamist allies running Iraq's new government. Iran sees the group as a terrorist organisation.
Two British journalists working for US television network CBS were among four people killed when a car bomb struck a military patrol in Baghdad.
American CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier was seriously wounded in the attack and six US soldiers were also wounded.
An unnamed soldier and an Iraqi civilian working with the military were killed along with the network's London-based cameraman Paul Douglas (48) and sound man James Brolan (42).
More than 70 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the March 2003 US-led invasion, making it the deadliest conflict for the profession since the second World War.
Britain said two soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack in Basra on Sunday, bringing the British military's death toll since the invasion to 113.
Iraq's armed forces, being trained by the US military to take charge of security, said they had captured a senior aide of al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has been blamed for some of the deadliest attacks in the country.
Iraqi forces and the US military have often reported detaining or killing key lieutenants of the Jordanian-born Sunni militant, whose attacks regularly target Iraq's Shia majority in what US officials say is an attempt to provoke civil war.
But Zarqawi himself remains at large, despite a $25 million US bounty on his head.
US officials have blamed much of the insurgency on loyalists of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni. The ousted president was back in court yesterday in his trial along with seven others for crimes against humanity. Defence witnesses gave evidence.
Iraqi leaders struggled to agree on who should head the defence and interior ministries, nine days after the self-styled government of national unity took office pledging to restore stability and heal sectarian wounds.
Intense wrangling forced prime minister Nuri al-Maliki to leave the key posts vacant when he announced his grand coalition of Shias, Sunnis and Kurds on May 20th.
The interior ministry job in particular has been controversial. The previous minister was accused of failing to halt Shia militia death squads operating among the police.
The appointments are also important for any plans to start withdrawing 150,000 foreign troops, most of them American, against a backdrop of declining US public support for President Bush over Iraq. - (Reuters)