IRAQ: Iraq may finally get a new government tomorrow, its president has said, offering an end to nearly three months of stalemate since the election.
But the shooting of 19 Iraqi soldiers at a soccer stadium, and President Jalal Talabani's account of 50 bodies being hauled from a river near Baghdad, showed that violence persists despite a relative lull perceived after the January 30th vote.
At a news conference after meetings with senior Iraqi leaders, Mr Talabani said he hoped Iraq's new cabinet would be finalised some time today.
He also said 50 bodies, believed to be those of Shia hostages seized in a town near Baghdad on Saturday, had been found in the Tigris river south of the capital.
In other violence, rebels shot dead 19 National Guardsmen in a soccer stadium in Haditha, about 200 kilometres north-west of Baghdad, after they took them prisoner, witnesses said.
Three car bombings in Baghdad killed at least two Iraqi civilians and wounded eight and two car bombs struck the entrance of a US and National Guard base in Ramadi about 100 kilometres west of Baghdad.
A bomb killed two US soldiers and wounded four late on Tuesday while they were patrolling near Baghdad's airport road.
A democratically elected government in power could ease Iraqis' widespread frustration about the weeks of horse-trading even as rebel violence has revived.
"We want to announce it [the new government] as soon as possible," Mr Talabani told reporters after meeting Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of Shia Muslim party SCIRI.
Iraqi leaders have been negotiating over the cabinet since January's elections that brought a Shia majority to power. But disagreements over distribution of ministries and on how the Sunni minority should be brought into the political process have held up the formation of the government.
The delay has created a climate of indecision, officials say, and let momentum against the insurgency built up by the elections to slip away.
Much of the squabbling has focused on the oil, interior and defence ministries.
US and Iraqi officials have worried that delays in forming the government will hurt the battle against insurgents. A key concern is whether the new government would change tack and do away with units like the Sunni-led commandos that have shown results against rebels.
Mr Talabani said more than 50 bodies believed to be those of hostages held in Madaen, an agricultural town about 45 kilometres south-east of Baghdad, had been taken from the Tigris.
"We have the full names of those who were killed and those criminals who committed these crimes," said Mr Talabani
Shia officials said on Saturday that Sunni militants had taken around 50 people hostage in Madaen and threatened them with death.
Later they said the number could be as high as 150.
Iraqi security forces raided the town but said they had found almost no evidence that anyone had been taken hostage or that there were any gunmen there.
Tensions have been running high between Shia and the once-dominant Sunni community since the election, particularly over events such as the Madaen hostage crisis, which many Sunnis dismissed as a fabrication.