Guerrillas Kill 4 Iraqis; Government Talks Lagging

Gunmen ambushed a convoy of trucks carrying construction material to a U.S. military facility north of Baghdad on Sunday, killing four Iraqi drivers.

A police general died in a roadside bombing in northern Iraq as violence continued a day after more than 20 people, including a U.S. soldier, were killed in several bombings and shootings.

A prominent Kurdish politician, meanwhile, said talks between Kurdish and Shiite leaders on forming a new government were “not going well” because of major policy differences. That could delay formation of a new government and any reduction of U.S. forces.

The ambush occurred near Nibaie, about 35 miles north of the capital, police Lt. Khalid Obaidi said. The area has been the scene of several ambushes and roadside bombings in the last few days.

In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded Sunday afternoon near a Shiite political office in the Jadiriya district, killing two people, including a policeman, and wounding five, three of them police, officials said.

Minutes later, a suicide bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body at an Iraqi army checkpoint protecting the Defense Ministry in central Baghdad. Three civilians were injured, police said.

Early today, a bomb exploded beside a group of laborers in Baghdad, wounding at least 19 people, Interior Ministry sources said.

Also Sunday, police found bodies of three men -- bound, blindfolded and shot -- in Baghdad’s Shiite stronghold of Sadr City. They appeared to be the latest victims of sectarian killings, which have sharpened religious tensions as Iraqi politicians try to form a national unity government after the December parliamentary elections.

Elsewhere, search crews Sunday found the wreckage of a German plane in northern Iraq with the six Germans and an Iraqi on board dead. The plane had been en route to Iraq from Azerbaijan carrying five employees of a Bavarian construction company when it went missing during stormy weather Thursday night.

The wreckage was found near Boushin, 160 miles northeast of Baghdad.

U.S. Embassy official Peter McHugh said the crash appeared to be an accident.