More than 50 die in Iraq bombings

BAGHDAD -- Bombs targeting Shi'ite Arab civilians and US and Iraqi forces at worship, at lunch, at home, and on the road killed more than 50 people across Iraq yesterday, officials said, taking the death toll past 600 since a new government was installed less than a month ago.

The Shi'ite-led administration, meanwhile, tried to portray itself as taking control of security. Iraqi TV aired extended broadcasts of three accused insurgents facing judges in the first capital trials since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

In another effort by the government to display its resolve, a music video introduced on state TV yesterday showed a dreaded police commando unit hunting for militant opponents, with its commander, Abul Waleed, saying: ''We will cut off the arms of insurgents."

Yesterday's violence followed a bombing lull of several days and the first significant overtures this weekend by Sunni Arab leaders to end a more than two-year Sunni boycott of politics.

The country's disgruntled Sunni minority, routed from power with Hussein in early 2003, has been at the forefront of the insurgency, and Americans and Iraqis have hoped that drawing Sunnis into the political process would quell the violence.

In the deadliest of yesterday's attacks, two bombs killed 30 people in the volatile northern town of Tal Afar, hospital officials said.

The first bomb exploded late yesterday outside the home of a Shi'ite tribal leader, according to hospital officials. A second exploded as crowds gathered to help the wounded from the first blast, the medical officials said. The second bomb claimed most of the victims, a spokesman said.

Tal Afar, near the northern city of Mosul, has frequently been the scene of heavy violence and has been particularly tense amid growing Shi'ite-Sunni strife in the weeks since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's Shi'ite-dominated government was installed.

Another car bomb exploded late yesterday outside a Shi'ite mosque at Mahmoudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad. The attack killed at least 10 people and injured 30, hospital officials said.

At lunchtime, a car bomb exploded outside a low-cost cafe frequented by workers in a predominantly Shi'ite neighborhood of north Baghdad, killing at least five people, hospital officials said.

The bomb was detonated by remote control, police said. While the intended targets appeared to have been police who also gather at the cafe, witnesses said the victims were civilians.

''I swear to God, I will not enter any restaurant if I see any policeman sitting there," laborer Saleem Nima said in a street littered with metal shards and body parts. Shopkeepers already were sweeping up shattered glass.

''There is no safe place in Baghdad, not even your bedroom," Nima added.

Insurgents ''are cowards," said Nabeel Hassan, another laborer. ''They cannot face these men man-to-man, so they show us how brave they are by killing these poor men who run all day to feed their families."

The day's violence began with gunmen killing a national security official, Major General Wael Rubaei, as he drove to work in Baghdad. His driver also was killed. Officials of the new government and security forces have been consistent targets of assassination.

The US military yesterday said four American troops were killed Sunday -- three in two attacks in Mosul and a fourth by a car bomb in Tikrit, north of Baghdad. A fifth US soldier died in a vehicle accident near Kirkuk, the military said.

US and Iraqi troops detained about 300 people in what a military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Clifford Kent, called the largest combined operation by the two countries' forces to date. The overnight sweeps targeted neighborhoods around the US-run prison at Abu Ghraib and near the road to Baghdad's main airport. Both have been scenes of repeated insurgent attacks.

To show itself fighting back against insurgents, Jaafari's government took to the airwaves.

State TV aired nearly an hour of videotape from a capital murder trial involving three alleged members of the Sunna al-Islam insurgent group in the southern city of Kut. The proceedings took place Sunday.

The three men, accused of killing at least three police officers, are the first defendants to face the death penalty since Hussein fell. Many Iraqi leaders have been adamant about retaining the death penalty to ensure that Hussein is executed if convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity in a trial expected this year.

The music video on state TV showed one of Iraq's most feared police units in action, catching insurgents, digging up arms caches, and patrolling streets. Sunni leaders accuse the unit, the Wolf Brigade, of torture and summary killings of Sunni clerics and others.

Lawmakers, meanwhile, were expected to elect a commission today to start drafting a new constitution, which is the main mandate of Jaafari's government. Lawmakers in the 275-seat National Assembly are to choose between a Shi'ite and a Kurd to chair the commission, and Shi'ite politicians have been adamant that a Shi'ite be picked.

Three legislators said the chairman probably would be Hummam Hammoudi, a Shi'ite Muslim cleric who is a senior aide to Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim. Hakim is the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is the largest Shi'ite Arab party in Iraq and controls the largest bloc in the assembly.

There have been calls for greater Sunni participation in drafting the constitution, which is supposed to be drawn up by mid-August and put to a referendum vote by October. Political inclusion of the Sunni minority, who account for about 20 percent of Iraq's 27 million people, is seen as a key factor in ending the insurgency.

Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.