Amid Iraq Violence, Kurds Unify Their Government

Bombs, mortar rounds and shootings Sunday killed at least 18 Iraqis as politicians took a day off from government-formation talks to inaugurate the Kurds’ new regional administration in Irbil.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, reported that a U.S. Marine died from wounds sustained in combat Sunday in the western province of Al Anbar. They did not release any further details.

Authorities in Baghdad said they had discovered the bullet-riddled bodies of 42 men in a 24-hour period ending Sunday morning, part of a wave of apparent sectarian killings. The corpses of eight men, handcuffed, blindfolded and showing signs of torture, were discovered Sunday morning near Al Kindi hospital.

Once mostly a matter of suicide bombers and remote-controlled blasts, political violence in Iraq has become increasingly targeted and specific. In a western Baghdad neighborhood, residents watched in horror Sunday as gunmen shot dead three men they had just let out of their vehicle. In northern Baghdad, at least two car bomb explosions went off within 30 minutes, killing nine people and injuring 15.

In the southern city of Karbala, three people were killed and 20 injured in a car bombing, said police and hospital officials, discounting earlier official reports that at least 21 had died in the blast.

A roadside bomb targeting a police vehicle in the northern city of Mosul killed three officers, said Brig. Gen. Ahmad Wathiq of the Mosul police department. Armed men kidnapped an Iraqi soldier in Kirkuk, and Iraqi and U.S. authorities said they had arrested a ring of men planting roadside bombs in the nearby city of Hawija.

Tensions between Iraqi Arabs and autonomy-seeking Kurds have fueled much of the violence in and around Kirkuk, capital of Al Tamim province. The Kurdish region in the north has functioned as a semiautonomous enclave since 1991, divided between two Kurdish blocs, each with its own administration.

On Sunday, the Kurds unveiled a new Cabinet, nominally reunifying the government. Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani announced a newly created Ministry of Natural Resources to manage and exploit newly discovered oil and energy deposits. He also vowed to support “newly liberated” parts of the Kurdish region, including Kirkuk.

Also Sunday, Army Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli toured two of the 258 forts the United States has helped establish along the Iraqi border to prevent insurgents from crossing into the country. Speaking at the isolated Ft. Karamashia on the eastern frontier with Iran, Chiarelli said Iraqi border police were getting “better and better every single day” at patrolling the region.

Chiarelli, the top U.S. commander based in Iraq, said the patrols needed to be better paid and equipped, especially with radios and other communications equipment. Some of the isolated outposts don’t have enough gas for police to adequately patrol their areas, he said.

But, he said, those improvements must, and will, be made because of the threat of weapons and insurgents crossing into Iraq. He said increasing tensions with Iran were one factor in concerns about shipments of bomb materials and other contraband across the border.

So far, the crossing guards had mostly intercepted Iranian pilgrims crossing without papers to visit Iraqi shrines in Najaf and elsewhere. More than 1,940 people have been stopped from entering illegally so far this year, compared with 1,500 in all of last year, said a Ukrainian officer who has been advising the Iraqis. No explosives were confiscated during that time, an Iraqi commander said.

“There is still a lot going over the border,” Chiarelli said. “I don’t know if you can ever stop it completely.”

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Daragahi reported from Baghdad and Rainey from Ft. Karamashia. Special correspondents in Irbil, Karbala and Kirkuk contributed to this report.