BAGHDAD, 21 April 2005 — The shooting of 19 Iraqi soldiers at a soccer stadium and President Jalal Talabani’s account of 60 bodies being hauled from a river near Baghdad showed that violence persists despite a relative lull perceived after the Jan. 30 vote.

However, a piece of good news is that Iraq may finally get a new government today, Talabani said, offering an end to nearly three months of stalemate since an election.

But insurgents kept up the pressure on politicians when a suicide bomber in a car blew himself up at a checkpoint near the party headquarters of caretaker Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, killing at least one person and wounding four, police said. At a news conference after meetings with senior Iraqi leaders, Talabani said he hoped Iraq’s new Cabinet would be finalized by today.

He also said 60 bodies, believed to be those of Shiite 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 km northwest of Baghdad, after they took them prisoner, witnesses said.

Three other 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, a hotbed of resistance about 100 km west of Baghdad.

A new 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,” Talabani told reporters after meeting Prime Minister Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, Allawi and Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, leader of Shiite party SCIRI.

“We are hoping it will happen tomorrow afternoon,” he said.

Talabani said more than 60 bodies believed to be those of hostages held in Madaen, an agricultural town about 45 km southeast 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 Talabani, a 71-year-old Kurdish leader.

Shiite officials said on Saturday that Sunni militants had taken around 60 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.

Later, Shiite officials said that dozens of bodies had been found in the Tigris south of Madaen, but a Reuters cameraman who visited the location found no evidence of any bodies.

Tensions have been running high between Shiites and the once-dominant Sunni community since the election, particularly in relation to events such as the Madaen hostage crisis, which many Sunnis dismissed as a fabrication.

The killings of the National Guards in Haditha followed clashes in the area between National Guards, US troops and rebels. Iraq’s National Guard, which is at the forefront of the battle against the insurgency, has been repeatedly targeted.

— With input from agencies