Iraq:Iraq's Shia vice-president and a cabinet minister were wounded in an apparent assassination attempt yesterday when a bomb killed six people at a ministry in Baghdad where they were attending a ceremony.
Later yesterday, near the volatile western city of Ramadi, a suicide bomber blew up an ambulance at a police station, killing 14 people including women and children, a local hospital official said.
While militants defied a security crackdown, the cabinet endorsed a draft oil law crucial to regulating how wealth from Iraq's vast reserves would be shared by its ethnic and sectarian groups, a move hailed by the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, as a "pillar for the unity of Iraqis".
Settling potentially explosive disputes over the world's third-largest oil reserves has been a top demand of Washington to maintain its support for Mr Maliki, a Shia Islamist who leads a unity government of Shias, ethnic Kurds and Sunni Arabs.
Yesterday the US military showed what it said was further evidence of Iranian-made weapons being used by Iraqi militants, including explosives linked to sophisticated roadside bombs.
The weapons, which included mortar bombs and 122mm rockets, were found during a raid by US forces and Iraqi police on Saturday near Baquba, north of Baghdad.
Washington, which accuses Iran of fanning violence in Iraq, is particularly concerned about what it calls "explosively formed projectiles" - bombs which, on detonation, shoot out a copper plate that becomes a large bullet-like projectile capable of penetrating armoured vehicles.
The US military says such bombs have killed 170 US soldiers in Iraq since 2004. Military officials showed reporters in Baghdad 14 large rockets, 19 mortars and several bags of C4 plastic explosive they said were made in Iran since 2004. But they said there was no way to know if the Iranian government was involved in supplying them.
Aides to vice-president Adel Abdul-Mahdi said he escaped with light shrapnel wounds when the bomb exploded in a meeting hall. Police said public works minister Riad Ghareeb, also a Shia, was seriously wounded.
One police source said the death toll could be as high as 12. The bomb wounded 31 people.
Mr Maliki, under pressure to quell violence threatening to plunge the country into all-out civil war, vowed to hunt down those responsible for the attack.
Iraqi leaders are often targeted by militants on either side of the sectarian divide. The ministry attack came despite a major new US-backed crackdown aimed at ridding Baghdad's lawless streets of Sunni Arab insurgents and Shia militias.
The suicide attack involving the ambulance occurred in a village near Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, the local hospital official said. Five policemen were among the dead.
Iraq's vast oil reserves are concentrated in the Kurdish north and the Shia south, so sharing its oil revenues is one of the country's most sensitive issues. Sunni Arabs, dominant under Saddam Hussein but now the backbone of the insurgency, fear a bad deal will seal their political doom in oil-deprived central and western Iraq.
The draft oil law, which now goes for a vote in parliament, could unlock billions of dollars in foreign investment, which Iraq badly needs to revive its shattered economy. It was endorsed with the backing of the Kurds, who had been haggling over the terms of some articles.
Deputy prime minister Barham Salih, head of the committee that drafted the law, said Iraq's leaders had pledged to have the law enacted by the end of May after its approval by parliament.
Mr Maliki said: "The benefits of this wealth will form a firm pillar for the unity of Iraqis and consolidate their social structure." US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad praised the agreement. "This is the first time since 2003 that all major Iraqi communities have come together on a defining piece of legislation," he said.
- (Reuters)