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Violent Iraq flurry kills 13, injures 20

BAGHDAD - Militants blew up 13 cars in three hours Sunday, injuring at least 20 people while 13 Iraqis were killed in other violence that fed the turmoil following last month's contested parliamentary elections.

Sunni Arabs made their opening bid in what could be protracted negotiations to form a new government. Leaders of the minority's main political group, the Iraqi Accordance Front, traveled to the northern city of Irbil for a meeting today with the president of the Kurdish region, which already has seen a flurry of postelection bargaining between Kurds and the governing Shiite Muslim religious party, the United Iraqi Alliance.

Preliminary results from the Dec. 15 election have given the Shiite group a strong lead in the voting for Iraq's 275-member parliament, but not enough for it to govern without other political blocs. Final election results are expected as early as this week.

Sudan, meanwhile, said six kidnapped embassy employees were freed Saturday, a day after Sudan announced it would close its Baghdad mission as demanded by al-Qaida in Iraq.

The Irbil meetings came ahead of today's visit to Iraq by a team of international monitors who will assess the elections, which have been endorsed as credible by the United Nations but denounced as rigged by opposition groups.

The worst bloodshed came in eastern Baghdad, where police said gunmen killed five people at a butcher shop and a bomb killed two police officers at a gas station.

Eight of the car bombs exploded in Baghdad and wounded 11 people, police said.

The Baiji refinery in northern Iraq reopened Saturday, Ahmed Ibrahim, the refinery's distribution manager, told the Washington Post . On Sunday, police killed two protesters in Kirkuk during a demonstration against rising fuel prices.

[Last modified January 2, 2006, 02:30:25]