41 Killed 76 Wounded In Bombings Among

41 Killed, 76 Wounded in Bombings
Among Wounded: 5 US Soldiers

The guerrilla campaign of mass violence continued unrelentingly on Sunday. Guerrillas in the far northern, largely Turkmen city of Telafar, sent a car bomb into the midst of a funeral for a just-assassinated local Kurdish leader. The bomb killed 30 mourners and wounded more than 50.

AP adds, ” At least six other car bombs one of them a suicide attack and five roadside explosions hit Baghdad on Sunday, killing six Iraqis, wounding more than 20 civilians, six Iraqi police officers and five U.S. soldiers.” There were also a number of other attacks and assassinations, using machine guns rather than car bombs.

The four-day total for deaths is 116.

Hannah Allam of Knight-Ridder explores the tensions between the small secularist factions and the religious Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, which now dominates the Iraqi parliament.

The NYT reports on the disarray of the Iraqi petroleum industry in the face of extensive and repeated sabotage by the guerrillas (who are attempting to stop the new Iraqi government from having the oil income).

Al-Hayat It was announced in Baghdad on Sunday that 11 Sunni Arab Friday prayers leaders were arrested for inciting their congregations to join the guerrilla war against the US and its allies.

The same newspaper reports that Sunni Arabs claim to have been attacked by Shiite militiamen who serve as paramilitaries for an unnamed Shiite party. The militia was allegedly joined by members of the police department of nearby Kut, a largely Shiite city now dominated by the Muqtada al-Sadr faction of Shiite puritans.

Some Sunni Arab parliamentarians are complaining that the highly unsatisfactory position of the Sunnis in the Jaafari cabinet is the fault of Vice President Ghazi al-Yawir, who had a veto but declined to use it. Now that the government has been approved, there is little real pressure on Jaafari to expedite the appointment of ministers acceptable to the Sunni Arabs.

Evidence is continuing to mount that United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair was warned by his attorney general that the Iraq adventure might be illegal.