BAGHDAD: Iraq’s Shia parliament bloc formed a committee yesterday to decide the fate of embattled Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari as deadly violence flared on the third anniversary of Saddam Hussain’s ouster.
Twelve people, including an Iraqi soldier, were killed in a series of roadside bombings and shootings across the country, where sectarian tensions were running high after the killing of more than 100 Shia in an explosion of violence since Thursday.
The Shia-led United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the 275-member parliament’s largest bloc, formed a three-member committee in a bid to end the standoff that has left a power vacuum nearly four months after an election for the first permanent government since Saddam was toppled on April 9, 2003.
Shia MPs Jawad al-Maliki of Jaafari’s Dawa party, deputy parliament speaker Hussain al-Shahristani, and Sheikh Hamam Hamoudi of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Dawa’s rival for power, were named as committee members.
“This committee will talk to the Kurds, the Sunnis and the secularists to get their view on Jaafari and then suggest a final opinion,” a source close to the negotiations said.
“If they reach an opinion that goes against Jaafari, then the UIA will meet tomorrow to select a new candidate to replace him.”
Yesterday’s talks were called after Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani wrote a letter to the alliance asking the leaders to prevent the bloc from unraveling, the source said.
Jaafari has faced immense pressure from UIA members as well as Kurdish, Sunni and secular parliament factions to withdraw his candidacy.
Kurdish and Sunni figures accuse him of failing to stop the wave of sectarian violence that has left hundreds dead since the bombing of a Shia shrine in Samarra on February 22.
Jaafari has refused to step aside although he has indicated he is ready to put the fate of his candidacy before parliament.
Acting Parliament Speaker Adnan al-Pachachi said he would soon convene the assembly, saying the date would be fixed in the next few days “as people are waiting for this impatiently.”
Jaafari, who headed Iraq’s one-year transitional government, was narrowly selected on February 12 as the UIA candidate for premier after forging an alliance with controversial Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
The political stalemate coincides with a wave of violence that has killed at least 106 Shia since Thursday, including a triple suicide bomb outside a popular Baghdad mosque and a car bombing in Najaf.
In violence on the ground, US forces killed eight suspected insurgents in a raid west of Baghdad yesterday , while 10 Iraqis, including a soldier, were killed in shootings and bombings.
US forces stormed an insurgent bomb-making facility yesterday near Hamaniyah, 22km west of Baghdad, the military said in a statement.
Five suspected rebels were killed in an ensuing firefight, while three more were killed when the US ground commander called in “air support” to target their machine-gun fire, the statement read.
Numerous weapons, ammunition, and falsified documents were found in the targeted safehouse, it added.
In other violence, a civilian was killed and six others wounded when a minibus packed with explosives blew up near Mustansriyah University in eastern Baghdad, police said.
One Iraqi bystander was killed and three wounded, including two policemen, when a roadside bomb exploded as a police patrol passed by in eastern Baghdad, an interior ministry official said.
A civilian was killed in a similar roadside blast against a police patrol in western Baghdad that also left two policemen wounded.
In Mahmudiyah, 30km south of Baghdad, one civilian was killed and another wounded by a roadside bombing on the town’s main route.
A series of attacks were also reported yesterday in and around the southern city of Basra.
Two people, one of them a university student, were shot dead by gunmen in the city, while policemen rescued two Iraqi hostages.
A police officer from Basra was gunned down by armed men, while the village leader of Qurna, 70km north of Basra, and his wife were shot dead when they were in their car waiting at a gas station, police said.
The body of a civilian kidnapped on Saturday night was also found in Basra.
Gunmen killed an Iraqi soldier while on way to his base in Dhuluiyah, 70km north of Baghdad, police said.
Police also found the body of an Egyptian citizen holding Iraqi nationality. The man had been shot to death.
Six other bullet-riddled bodies were recovered across Iraq yesterday, police added.
The bulk of Iraqi violence takes place around central Iraq, home to a large concentration of the country’s Sunni minority, many of whom took up arms after the fall of Saddam’s regime three years ago. – AFP |
