Car Bombs Kill 22 in Bustling Baghdad Square

On a day when Iraqi lawmakers declared an end to months of political gridlock, two car bombs ripped through a crowded Baghdad traffic circle Saturday, killing 22 people, including two U.S. contractors, authorities said.

A plume of black smoke hung over the city after the powerful explosion hit a convoy of three SUVs passing through busy Tahrir Square, a notoriously dangerous bottleneck near the heavily fortified Green Zone. At least 54 people were injured, including children from a nearby school, officials said.

News agencies reported that two suicide bombers attacked the convoy.

In the 10 days since Iraq’s Shiite Muslim-led government was approved, almost 300 people have been killed in a frenzy of car bombings, ambushes and assassinations.

The government was approved despite prominent vacancies in key Cabinet posts. On Saturday, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari announced that Iraqi leaders had agreed on six candidates to fill remaining Cabinet vacancies after nearly 100 days of wrangling and power plays in the wake of the country’s historic Jan. 30 election. The names are to come before the National Assembly for approval today.

Among the vacancies is the position of defense minister, which had been reserved for a Sunni Arab. Although Jafari would not confirm any names, sources within the government said Saadoun Dulaimi had been nominated for the post.

Agreement on his appointment would be a notable about-face for the dominant Shiite bloc, which had initially vetoed Dulaimi’s candidacy because of his Baath Party past.

Dropping objections to Dulaimi may signal Shiite leaders’ eagerness to remove the remaining roadblocks to the formation of a Cabinet.

Slated for the powerful Oil Ministry post, officials said, is Ibrahim Bahr Uloum, a Shiite who held the position in the temporary U.S.-appointed governing council. His appointment had been expected for days.

Since the landmark election, the nascent Iraqi democracy has been marked by ceremony, with much weight placed on the symbolism of the evolving political process. Iraqi leaders now face the challenge of tackling the escalating violence and writing a draft of a new constitution by Aug. 15.

The key test for the political leadership may be whether any concessions by the Shiite majority alliance can assuage Sunni Arabs’ frustration over their loss of power in the new political landscape.

Jafari said that in addition to Dulaimi, a Sunni Arab would be appointed minister of human rights and another is expected to be named a deputy prime minister.

Political analyst Hassan Bazaz, who described himself as a friend of Dulaimi, said the candidate had been an intelligence officer under Saddam Hussein in the 1980s but left Iraq for England, where he received a doctorate in sociology. He also lived in Saudi Arabia and returned to Iraq in 2003, after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Hussein’s Baathist regime.

Dulaimi has emerged as a pundit and a pioneer of Western-style polling. Exactly what role he played in Hussein’s notorious intelligence service is still unclear, but the Shiite leadership was concerned enough to veto his candidacy two weeks ago.

Sheik Hashem Ithawi, a prominent Sunni tribal leader, called Dulaimi a “patriotic personality” who was “well-accepted by the western tribes.” Many major Sunni clans hail from the vast desert expanses of western Iraq.

The Shiite slate, the United Iraqi Alliance, won more than half the assembly seats in the January election and has since refused to consider any candidate for office with strong links to Hussein’s regime.

One of the most prominent Sunnis in the government, Assembly Speaker Hachim Hassani, said the alliance might have agreed to Dulaimi in a compromise to move the stalled political process along.

Bayan Jabr, a longtime loyalist of one of the leading Shiite Islamist parties, has been named to head the powerful Interior Ministry, which has overall control of police and internal security.

“Can a Sunni defense minister and a Shiite interior minister agree on a strategy? If they can agree, that could be very fruitful,” Bazaz said. Dulaimi, he said, “is very well-balanced, and I think he will be a good minister.”

The standoff between Shiites and Sunnis over the purge of prominent ex-Baathists from the government led Vice President Ghazi Ajil Yawer and two Sunni ministers to boycott the ministerial swearing-in ceremony last week.

The Sunnis’ frustration with their marginal position in the new political environment is believed to be fueling the insurgency. Though a minority, Sunni Arabs had long been the dominant force in Iraq.

U.S. and Iraqi officials hope to draw Sunni Arabs into the political process and thus drain support from the insurgency. This political strategy, combined with military pressure on the guerrillas, is viewed as a way out of the cycle of violence that has overtaken Iraq and stymied economic progress.

Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born militant, claimed responsibility in an Internet posting for Saturday’s convoy attack in central Baghdad, according to news agency reports.

Surrounded by a commercial district of tea shops and bookstores, the traffic circle where the blast occurred is near a school, and several children were among the injured, witnesses said. The circle is also on a direct route to the U.S.-protected Green Zone, home to the American Embassy and many foreign contracting offices.

The bomb destroyed more than a dozen cars and left a shallow crater in the street.

The phalanx of SUVs was headed toward a nearby bridge, recalled Abbas Said Mola, a 35-year-old shopkeeper who said he saw the bombs go off when the cars passed a sedan parked by a tea shop.

“I was only some meters from the explosions,” he said.

An embassy official said the two Americans killed Saturday worked as security contractors, but the official would not provide their employer’s name pending a statement from the company. The SUVs often favored by private contractors stand out in Baghdad traffic and are prime targets.

Also Saturday, the military confirmed that a Marine was killed Friday when a bomb exploded in Al Karmah, west of Baghdad.

Elsewhere in Al Anbar province, the bodies of two men were found in a stadium in Ramadi, a rebel stronghold west of the capital, and three people were killed farther west in Haditha, doctors said.

Times staff writers Caesar Ahmed, Raheem Salman, Saif Rasheed and Zainab Hussein in Baghdad and a special correspondent in Fallouja contributed to this report.