One of Iraq's deadliest days strains fragile coalition talks

BAGHDAD, Iraq — In a second consecutive day of carnage in Iraq, a suicide bomber Thursday killed at least 63 people in the mostly Shiite Muslim city of Karbala, while another suicide bomber killed at least 56 people in the predominantly Sunni Muslim city of Ramadi.

Insurgents killed five U.S. soldiers and one Marine in attacks unrelated to the bombings.

Thursday's violence, the worst by far since the largely peaceful parliamentary elections Dec. 15, came after a suicide bombing killed at least 32 Shiite funeral mourners Wednesday in Muqdadiyah, north of Baghdad. It also marked one of the deadliest days since the insurgency began nearly three years ago.

The two-day death toll of at least 183, including smaller attacks, threatened to raise religious and ethnic tensions as secular and religious political factions continued to negotiate over key positions in the post-election government. The existing government, meanwhile, sought to reassure Iraqis that it had stepped up efforts to pre-empt insurgent attacks.

The violence is straining talks intended to forge a new coalition, say politicians close to the negotiations among newly elected Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish politicians.

Thursday, one official with the largest Shiite political party watched images from the aftermath of the Karbala attack. The bomber blew himself up near the shrine of Imam Hussein, whose death during a battle in Karbala cemented the Sunni-Shiite split.

"Did you see what happened in Karbala today? Sunni Arabs must condemn strongly, and clearly, the terrorists," said the official from the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), who asked that his name not be used. "We don't want to deal with someone who in the day is with the political process but at night is with the terrorists."

The violence comes at a delicate moment for Iraq. While Shiites, who won a majority in the election, have maintained they want to bring minority Sunni Arabs into the government, the attacks and the inability of Sunni Arab politicians to come out strongly against the insurgents may threaten an inclusive coalition.

The Sunni Arabs are "brothers" and "friends" with us, says the SCIRI official, but his group of Shiite leaders is frustrated with Sunni Arab leaders emerging after December's vote who have been ambivalent about denouncing the violence.

But the Sunnis say they are already doing enough to decry the violence.

"We have many statements condemning such terrorist attacks," said Naseer al Ani, a top official in the Sunni Arab Iraqi Islamic Party's political bureau. "Terrorism is killing innocent Iraqis and the resistance is targeting the American [troops]. We only support the resistance."

A senior official in the Iraqi Accordance Movement, the main minority Sunni coalition, also denounced the violence and called for solidarity among Iraqis to defeat it, but blamed the government for allowing it to happen.

"This government has not only failed to end violence, but it has become an accomplice in the cycle of violence by adopting sectarian policies and by weakening the state and strengthening militia groups," Izzat al-Shahbandar said.

Mostly it is the Shiite officials who find their way to TV cameras after such attacks to denounce them, and imams in Shiite mosques who decry them during Friday prayers.

In fact, the Iraqi Islamic Party and two other groups that make up the leading Sunni Arab list of candidates used their ties to the insurgency to bolster their campaigns.

There were no claims of responsibility for Thursday's suicide bombings. However, in an Internet posting that couldn't be verified, a militant group in Iraq that's affiliated with al-Qaida claimed responsibility for several car-bomb attacks on Iraqi forces Thursday.

The U.S. soldiers died when a roadside bomb struck their convoy south of Karbala, a U.S. military spokesman said. The Marine died of wounds received during a firefight with insurgents in Fallujah, west of Baghdad.

As of Thursday, at least 2,188 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The suicide bomber in Karbala, south of Baghdad, detonated a vest of explosives among pilgrims, sidewalk vendors and other pedestrians along a busy street between two of Shiite Islam's most revered shrines. The blast, in front of a hotel and about 60 feet from the Imam Hussein shrine, turned the lively scene into one of chaos and death.

The dead included Iraqi, Iranian and Indian pilgrims. The bomber struck "among the crowd of visitors," said Mohammed Hassan, of the shrine's protection force. "They were only innocent people."

Hussein General Hospital's doctors and nurses rushed to treat many of the more than 148 people injured in the bombing, while sending others to a hospital in another city.

The bombing was the deadliest attack in Karbala since March 2004, when coordinated bombings killed more than 100 people. An improvised bomb exploded in Karbala on Wednesday but killed no one.

West of Baghdad in Ramadi, a suicide bomber detonated a belt of explosives in a crowd of people at a police recruiting-and-screening center, killing at least 56 and wounding at least 60, Iraqi officials reported.

In addition to recruits, the dead included police officers who had come to collect paychecks, according to the Interior Ministry.

The ministry also reported that insurgent snipers fired on the scene after the explosion, killing three children nearby.

In response to Thursday's violence, the Interior Ministry released a statement asserting that a "Baghdad security plan" that it and the Defense Ministry had put in place Wednesday had led to the arrests of 51 terrorists and the defusing of eight improvised bombs.

Iraqi security forces were out in force Wednesday and Thursday in Baghdad, barring traffic from two Tigris River bridges and setting up checkpoints.

Compiled from Knight Ridder Newspapers, The Christian Science Monitor and The Associated Press