At least 48 killed in latest violence in Baghdad

updated 4:15 a.m. ET March 13, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The feared resumption of mass sectarian violence erupted Sunday in a Baghdad Shiite slum when bombers blew apart two markets shortly before sundown, killing at least 48 people and wounding more than 200.

The bloody assaults on Sadr City came only minutes after Iraqi political leaders 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 militiamen of radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr amid pandemonium 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, who appeared to be an African, that lay in the street at a shop door, according to AP Television News video.

The nature of the attack, its use of a suicide bomber, bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida in Iraq, which has said it hoped to start a Shiite-Sunni civil conflict.

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.

Parliament to meet Tuesday
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 on Tuesday in an attempt to reach agreement on a new government. Khalilzad said he would be available to join the talks at any time.

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 take place 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.

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, stood by Shiite leader Adbul-Aziz al-Hakim and other Kurdish, Sunni Arab and secular leaders to make the announcement.

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.”

“To deal with the threat, (there is) the need on an urgent basis to form a government of national unity,” Khalilzad said.

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