7 US service members killed in insurgent violence in Iraq

BAGHDAD -- Seven US troops were killed in action during a 48-hour period as insurgent violence raged in the Sunni Arab heartland of western and central Iraq, the US military reported yesterday.

The attacks occurred as Iraq's US-backed government reached out to the disenfranchised Sunni Arab minority, approving four more Sunni Arabs to serve in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shi'ite. But one Sunni appointee rejected the job, underscoring sectarian divisions.

Three US Marines and one sailor were killed in a bombing and firefight Saturday in and around a hospital in the rebel hot spot of Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Insurgents detonated a vehicle bomb while guerrillas inside the hospital fired guns and rocket-propelled grenades from windows fortified with sandbags, the military said.

Two soldiers were killed yesterday in an explosion near Khalidiya, west of Baghdad, and one was killed by a bomb near Samarra, north of the capital.

The fatal attacks occurred in towns that have large Sunni Arab majorities long hostile toward US forces and US-backed Iraqi police and military units. Repeated US strikes in all three places have failed to wipe out rebel cells, a familiar pattern in much of the Sunni heartland of central, northern, and western Iraq.

Embittered Sunni Arabs are believed to represent most of the insurgents who have waged a brutal and effective guerrilla war against US-led multinational forces and their Iraqi allies. Most Sunni Arabs stayed away from the historic elections of Jan. 30.

But thus far the new government's vows of reconciliation with Sunni Arabs have failed to slow a daily barrage of car bombings, ambushes, and assassinations.

A terrorist group headed by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi also has taken responsibility for many attacks. Yesterday, the military announced that a Zarqawi associate, Ammar Adnan Mohammed Hamza al-Zubaydi, had been captured Thursday in Baghdad.

Zubaydi was the key planner of the April 29 blasts in the capital and of an April 2 attack on Abu Ghraib prison, the military said.

Inside his home were documents about plans to assassinate Iraqi government officials, the statement said.

The Bush administration hopes that Iraq's move toward a representative government will draw Sunni Arabs into the political process and sap support for the insurgency. Sunni Arabs are underrepresented in the 275-member National Assembly, but Jaafari has sought to appoint Sunnis to the Cabinet as an olive branch.

Yesterday, Jaafari made appointments to six Cabinet posts, naming Sunni Arabs to four in a bid to end the sectarian discord that has slowed the political process. Parliament approved all six.

But Hashim Abdul-Rahman al-Shibli, the Sunni candidate for human rights minister, said he didn't want a job he thought had been offered as a token.

''Obviously this contradicts with my beliefs and principals," he said, adding that he was surprised to learn of his appointment on television.

The Assembly approved the appointment of Saadoun al-Duleimi, who was a former lieutenant colonel in Saddam Hussein's security directorate, as defense minister. He left Iraq in 1984 and lived in exile until Hussein's fall in 2003. But how much power Duleimi will have compared with the Shi'ite-controlled Interior Ministry, which is in charge of internal security, remains to be seen.

His candidacy for defense minister had been blocked just weeks ago but passed in yesterday's vote, a reversal that probably signaled a spirit of compromise.

The Cabinet is now expected to contain 17 Shi'ite ministers, eight Kurds, six Sunni Arabs, and a Christian. The three deputy prime ministers include a Shi'ite, a Kurd, and a Sunni Arab. The prime minister has said he might appoint a woman as the fourth deputy prime minister.

The government is soon expected to move on to its principal task: writing a new constitution. The lawmakers have a deadline of Aug. 15 to complete the document, though they may take an extension of up to six months.

Yesterday's National Assembly session suffered from the absenteeism that has become standard. More than half of the 275-member assembly stayed away from the ceremony in the US-guarded Green Zone. Security concerns have kept many members from traveling to Baghdad, officials said.

Earlier in the day, gunmen assassinated a senior Transportation Ministry official, Zoba Yass, and his driver, making them the latest victims in a bloody campaign of politically motivated killings.

Other government appointments were Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni, who will be minister of industry, and Abed Mutlak al-Jiburi, also a Sunni, who will become the third deputy prime minister.

Mihsin Shlash, a Shi'ite, was named minister of electricity, and Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, another Shi'ite, will be oil minister.

''This ministry is a vital one; it becomes the main vein in the economy of Iraq," Uloum said at a news conference yesterday. ''Therefore, we will seek . . . to increase the production to reach its old rates. We have to restore the production to the quantity of May last year."

Uloum was the previous oil minister in the US-picked provisional government.