IRAQ: Gunmen killed the brother of a top Iraqi Sunni politician, officials said yesterday, in the second killing in days of a relative of a Sunni leader as deadlock over a unity government showed no sign of loosening.
One day after yesterday's parliamentary session was delayed to give bickering politicians more time to form a government aimed at averting civil war, the body of Saleh al-Mutlak's brother was identified in a Baghdad morgue.
Saleh al-Mutlak, a wealthy businessman with links to former Baathists close to the insurgency, heads an Arab nationalist list which has 11 seats in parliament.
The body of his brother, kidnapped three weeks ago, had bullet wounds to the head, Interior Ministry sources said.
The discovery, after gunmen shot dead the brother of leading Sunni politician Tareq al-Hashemi on Thursday, threatens to intensify sectarian tensions between Iraq's majority Shia community and minority Sunni Arabs.
The bodies of 12 shooting victims, some showing signs of torture, were found in different areas of Baghdad yesterday, Interior Ministry sources said.
Highlighting Iraq's security crisis, about 50 insurgents attacked Iraqi forces in Baghdad early yesterday, prompting US troops to provide support in a battle that lasted seven hours, said an American military spokesman.
The guerrillas attacked Iraqi forces in the mostly Sunni Arab district of Adhamiya in northern Baghdad overnight, forcing other Iraqi troops to come to their aid.
Five rebels were killed and one member of the Iraqi forces was wounded. There were no US casualties, said the spokesman. "It was quite a battle. It lasted seven hours," he added.
A wave of reprisal killings unleashed by the February bombing of a Shia shrine has pushed Iraq towards the brink of civil war three years after US forces invaded.
After months of resisting Sunni and Kurdish opposition to the prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, as its nominee for a second term, the ruling Shia Alliance floated a new candidate during closed-doors talks on Sunday to end the political deadlock.
But yesterday, a senior member of Mr Jaafari's Dawa party said he was still officially the alliance's nominee, suggesting the impasse over the premiership may be far from over.
"The alliance is still holding Jaafari as it nominee for the prime minister's post," Jawad al-Maliki told state television.
Mr Jaafari was nominated during an internal vote of Shia legislators in February, but Sunnis, Kurds and even some Shias are demanding a new candidate, saying the soft-spoken Islamist physician has failed to curb violence.
Acting speaker Adnan Pachachi, who on Sunday postponed yesterday's parliament session to give parties more time to bury their differences, yesterday said he would convene the 275-seat assembly "very soon, hopefully in the next few days".Even if Shia legislators overcome the row over Mr Jaafari, there are signs of more disputes ahead over other government posts.
The alliance, the largest bloc in parliament, says it opposes the Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front's decision to nominate Mr Hashemi as speaker of parliament.
Four months of political wrangling has followed December elections. Failure to agree on the speaker and the president could delay for at least another month the formation of Iraq's first full-term government since Saddam Hussein was toppled.
The US has been putting pressure on Iraqi leaders to form a coalition government. Washington hopes a government comprising Shias, Sunni Arabs and Kurds will foster stability and allow it to begin withdrawing troops.