Mayhem Across Iraq Leaves 15 Dead and Dozens Wounded

Security forces in Iraq shot dead four people protesting a recent increase in fuel prices, police said, and at least 11 other Iraqis were slain in scattered violence Sunday.

The protest in the northern city of Kirkuk attracted several hundred people, some of whom set fire to an office building belonging to Iraq’s North Oil Co., a police colonel said. Four cars and two gas stations were also set ablaze.

Security forces opened fire on some of the demonstrators, killing four, police Capt. Salaam Zangana said. At least two other protesters were wounded in the clash, he said.

A curfew was imposed. Police said it was unclear whether U.S. or Iraqi forces fired, but a spokesman for the American military said U.S. troops had wounded only one person in a car at a checkpoint and said there were no other gunshot casualties in the local hospital.

In Baghdad, gunmen killed five people at a butcher shop in the eastern part of the capital, and a bomb killed two police officers at a gas station.

Two more Iraqis were slain and five wounded by gunfire at a Sunni mosque in south Baghdad, while a Shiite sheik was fatally shot at a market in the same part of the city.

In the northern city of Mosul, about a dozen gunmen attacked a police checkpoint, killing a bystander and wounding three policemen, police said.

Sixteen civilians were wounded when a car bomb targeting a U.S. patrol exploded near the northern oil refining town of Baiji, local authorities said. In Baghdad, eight car bombs exploded and wounded a total of 11 people, police said. Officers later destroyed a ninth car bomb that failed to go off.

A suicide car bomber near Tikrit injured six civilians, and in Kirkuk, a bomb aimed at an Iraqi police convoy wounded three civilians, police said.

Meanwhile, a Cypriot kidnapped four months ago was freed after his family paid a $200,000 ransom, a relative said. A Lebanese engineer kidnapped four days ago was released, Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported Sunday.

In other developments, Sunni Arabs made their opening bid in negotiations to form a new government in the wake of the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections. Leaders of the minority’s main political group, the Iraqi Accordance Front, traveled to the northern city of Irbil for a meeting today with the president of the Kurdish region.

That area has seen a flurry of postelection bargaining between Kurds and the dominant Shiite Muslim religious party, the United Iraqi Alliance.

Results so far have given the Shiite group a strong lead in the voting for Iraq’s 275-member parliament, but not enough seats for it to govern without other political blocs.

After last year’s Jan. 30 parliamentary elections, it took nearly three months of negotiations between the Shiite religious alliance and a coalition of Kurdish parties to form an interim government. That balloting, unlike last month’s, was boycotted by most Sunni Arabs.

The early part of this year looks more crucial as Iraq tries to shape an administration that will govern for four years. U.S. officials are pushing the parties to form a broad-based coalition government, and failed bargaining could worsen the civil strife.

Final election results are expected as early as this week, and the Shiite religious bloc may win about 130 seats -- short of the 184 seats needed to avoid a coalition with other parties to elect a president. That vote is a prerequisite before a government can be formed.

The Kurds could get about 55 seats, the main Sunni Arab groups about 50 and the secular Shiite bloc headed by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi about 25.