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Dozens killed, hundreds wounded in Shiite slum

Residents of the poor neighborhood were buying food for evening meals.

BAGHDAD - The guarded words of hope had barely been spoken on one side of the Tigris River on Sunday before being drowned out by the thunder and terror of new bombings on the other.

The feared resumption of mass sectarian violence erupted in a Baghdad Shiite slum when bombers blew apart two markets shortly before sundown, killing at least 44 people and wounding about 200.

The bloody assaults on Sadr City came only minutes after leading politicians, in an unusual all-party meeting, made a show of determination to bridge the deep divides keeping them from forming a national-unity government. They said the new Parliament will convene Thursday, three days earlier than planned, as the U.S. ambassador pushed to break a stalemate over naming a unity government.

The attackers struck with car bombs, including a suicide driver, and mortars at the peak shopping time, destroying dozens of market stalls and vehicles as the explosives ripped through the poor neighborhood as residents were buying food for their evening meals.

The neighborhood was quickly sealed off by Mahdi Army militia of radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as residents searched wildly for survivors and put charred corpses into ambulances and trucks to be taken away.

Smoke billowed into the evening sky and angry young men kicked the decapitated head of the suicide attacker that lay in the street at a shop door, according to AP Television News video.

Police said they defused a third car bomb, likely preventing an even higher death toll.

Bomb blasts, rocket and gunfire also killed at least 12 other people - 10 in Baghdad - and wounded 34 Sunday. The low thud of mortar fire periodically rumbled over the city.

The Sadr City bombers struck shortly after U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and leaders of Iraq's main ethnic and religious blocs concluded a news conference to announce agreement to move forward the first session of the new Parliament to Thursday.

The political leaders said they would open marathon meetings today in an attempt to reach agreement on a new government.

Khalilzad said a permanent government needed to be in place quickly to fill the "vacuum in authority" at a time of continuing effort by "terrorists to provoke sectarian conflict."

Among the issues to be discussed are how many positions various blocs will get in the new government, which will fill key posts and the government's program of action.

The first parliamentary session will be held three months after Dec. 15 elections and a month after the results were certified. It sets in motion a 60-day deadline for the legislature to elect a new president, approve the nomination of a prime minister and sign off on his Cabinet.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Al-Jaafari's candidacy for a second term is one of the major issues in dispute as some Kurdish, Sunni and secular leaders argue he is too divisive and did too little to contain previous sectarian violence.

The political development came as Iraq's defense and interior ministers announced their agencies would begin conducting security raids jointly to raise public confidence that the Shiite-led Interior Ministry was not harboring death squads that target Sunni Arabs and their mosques, as Sunni leaders have alleged.

Under the new plan announced by Defense Minister Saadoun al-Duleimi and Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, the military and police would put together joint teams when making arrests. Members of U.S.-led coalition forces would sit in on investigations to "ensure (their) integrity," Duleimi said.

Information from the Washington Post was used in this report.

[Last modified March 13, 2006, 00:59:12]