New bomb attacks kill 11 Iraqis and a US soldier

BAGHDAD -- Insurgents kept up pressure yesterday, detonating a string of bombs in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities yesterday that killed at least 11 Iraqis and one American soldier. The US military announced that four other Americans had died in hostilities on Thursday.

Three roadside bombs and three suicide car bombs exploded in the space of five hours in Mosul, killing five Iraqi civilians and wounding five Iraqi soldiers, five Iraqi civilians, and the US soldier, the US military said.

In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded outside the offices of a Sunni political group, killing three people. Police had raided the offices Friday.

Five others were killed by gunmen and bombers in other attacks around Baghdad.

A rocket attack on a neighborhood in southern Fallujah killed three civilians, a US military statement said.

Yesterday's intensity was down from the attacks of Friday, when more than a dozen roadside bombs, suicide car bombs, and mortar shells killed more than 50 people around the country. But it still represented a high level of violence, flaunting the difficulty that Iraq's two-day-old government faces in curbing guerrillas.

Gunmen ambushed a US soldier yesterday in Khaldiyah, the military said.

The four US soldiers killed Thursday died in a bomb explosion in Tal Afar, near Mosul, the military said.

US and Iraqi forces discovered an apparent bomb-making factory last week in the area of Fallujah and Ramadi, one of the hottest areas of the insurgency, the US military said. The find included nine assembled bombs, 180 artillery rounds, 4,425 mortar rounds, 80 mines, and 600 grenades, in addition to ignition fuses and detonation cord, the US military said. Bombs usually are fashioned from single mortar or artillery rounds. The cache was the largest found to date in that region.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafaari and others in the Shi'ite- dominated leadership continued efforts to reach agreement with Sunnis to fill two key Cabinet vacancies reserved for the disaffected minority: those of the minister of defense and a deputy premier.

A spokesman for Jafaari, Laith Kubba, said yesterday that a list of concerns raised by the Sunnis would be part of the government program that Jafari plans to make public on Tuesday after members of his new Cabinet are sworn in.

The Sunnis have said they want the rebuilding of war-damaged Sunni towns, release of Sunni detainees, and an end to discrimination in government employment.

When a reporter called Kubba's cellphone yesterday, one of the Sunni negotiators answered. ''This is just to prove to you the point that we are talking," Kubba later joked to the reporter.

Jafaari and other leaders, meanwhile, plan to crack down on Sunni-led insurgents and purge suspected infiltrators and corrupt officers from the nation's security forces, officials and lawmakers say.

A likely tactic, authorities say, is unleashing well-trained Iraqi commandos in Baghdad and other trouble spots. The special forces units have a reputation for effectiveness and brutality.

Whether additional Iraqi troops can tame an insurgency that has not withered in the face of massive US military might remains to be seen. But Shi'ite leaders express confidence that determined Iraqi forces, with US backup, can use their superior knowledge of the culture, language, and terrain to gather intelligence, infiltrate cells, and defeat the guerrillas.

The Iraqi commandos' wider deployment indicates that the raging guerrilla conflict is increasingly a war pitching Iraqis against Iraqis, leading to a decline in US casualty rates even as the number of Iraqi dead soars.

The prospect of stepped-up counterinsurgency efforts is greatly unsettling to a Sunni Arab minority that already considers itself besieged and disenfranchised in the new Iraq. Most Sunnis boycotted the Jan. 30 election, and their political representation is scant.

Shi'ite leaders insisted on controlling the Interior Ministry during marathon talks to form the new government. Their plan is to oust guerrilla informants and sympathizers of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party and pursue insurgents in a more concerted fashion than the regime of outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, whose political slate was shut out of the new Cabinet.

Material from the Los Angeles Times was included in this report.