BAGHDAD, 15 April 2006 — Widespread sectarian violence has left dozens dead across Iraq as lawmakers met at the house of the president yesterday and agreed to form a commission to study setting up a new government four months after elections. The heads of Iraq’s parliamentary blocs met agreed to form a commission to decide who should fill the various posts, said Bassem Sharif, spokesman of the Shiite Fadhila party. “Some of the blocs had no candidates in mind and weren’t prepared for the meeting,” he told AFP. “So we decided to form a commission of six members to work intensively on candidate names and submit them to the party heads before the meeting of the parliament.”
At least 44 Iraqis have been killed in attacks since Thursday, as violence, much of it sectarian inspired, continues to engulf a country suffering from the political vacuum. Four Iraqis were killed when two roadside bombs went off next to two Sunni mosques in the restive city of Baquba, 60 kilometers northeast of Baghdad.
Police said three people were killed and two wounded in a bombing next to Al-Aqsa Mosque. Another civilian died and three others were wounded in the second bombing near the Saad Bin Mahaz Mosque.
Both explosions occurred after Friday prayers near the sanctuaries located in the center of Baquba. In the past few weeks dozens of people have died in a series of bombings and shootings in and around Baquba, the deadliest being a car bomb attack on a Shiite mosque that left 26 people dead on Wednesday.
In the latest tit for tat attack, mortar rounds struck near a Shiite mosque after prayers in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Zafaraniya, but there were no casualties. Three Iraqis, including a police major from the northern oil center of Kirkuk and two civilians near Mosul, were killed in drive-by shootings Friday.
In the oil refining center of Baiji, a drive by shooting killed a man walking along the street. In the main southern city of Basra, two Iraqis were killed and four British soldiers wounded when a suicide bomber blew up a vehicle as a their convoy passed, British officials said.
Southwest of Baghdad, meanwhile, police reported one man was killed and another grievously injured when the car bomb they were working on exploded. Police said 11 employees of a construction company were kidnapped in the city and murdered Thursday. Seven policemen were also killed and more than 20 went missing when a large group of policemen transporting police vehicles was ambushed by gunmen north of Baghdad on Thursday, a security official said.
Late Thursday, a car bomb attack killed 15 people in a Baghdad Shiite neighborhood - the fourth such bombing against either shrines or residential areas of the majority community in the past eight days.
