Suicide bomber kills 13 in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A suicide bomber killed at least 12 other people and injured 17 when he blew himself up Sunday in a downtown Baghdad restaurant frequented by police. The attack came as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pledged to soon fill vacancies in his two key security ministries.\nThe attack against the Safar restaurant was part of a spree of roadside bombs, mortar rounds and a drive-by shooting that killed at least 18 Iraqis and wounded dozens.\nThe 12 dead in the restaurant attack included three police officers, said Police Col. Abbas Mohammed. The explosion occurred at 1:20 p.m. during the crowded lunch hour in Baghdad's mixed Karradah neighborhood.\nBlood was splattered on the restaurant's white tile walls, and wrought iron chairs were scattered throughout the corner store.\nAl-Maliki's new government met for the first time Sunday. The prime minister hopes the government will eventually improve Iraq's military and police forces, persuade the insurgents to lay down its weapons and disband militias, reduce sectarian violence and restore stability to Iraq.\nIf all that can be done, it would set the stage for the eventual withdrawal of 132,000 American and thousands of other foreign troops.\nBut political infighting left three important posts in the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish Cabinet temporarily filled -- the very ones responsible for managing Iraq's army, police forces and national security.\nAl-Maliki, a Shiite, has said he was determined to soon find independent, nonsectarian officials to fill those three portfolios in his government.\n"I do not think that the naming of defense and interior ministers will take more than two or three days," he said at a news conference.\nThe new government was welcomed by President Bush and key leaders in the Middle East and Europe. Bush said Sunday "the formation of the unity government in Iraq begins a new chapter in our relationship with Iraq."\nIn an interview with The Associated Press, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the next six months would be critical for Iraq as the new government seeks to win public confidence and improve security.\nArab leaders worry that the violence in Iraq could spill over to its neighbors and that their own militant Islamists may find fertile training ground in Iraq and eventually return to their homelands to wreak havoc.\nIn neighboring Jordan, King Abdullah II, said he hoped the development would be a "significant step toward building a new Iraq that would be able to fulfill the aspirations of its people for a better life, democracy, (political) pluralism and stronger national unity."\nAbdullah conveyed those sentiments to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani by telephone, the Jordanian Royal Palace said.\nKuwait's leader, Emir Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah, whose country was invaded by Saddam Hussein's forces in 1990, wished the Cabinet "success in serving the brotherly Iraqi people." He also expressed hope that the Cabinet members would succeed in "closing their ranks and using their capabilities in building Iraq," the state-owned Kuwait News Agency reported Al Sabah as saying in a telegram to Talabani.\nArab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa was hopeful that with the new Cabinet in place, a conference bringing together representatives of Iraq's ethnic and political-based forces could finally be held in Iraq, possibly as early as next month, Egypt's semi-official Middle East News Agency reported.\nBush said he called Talabani, al-Maliki and parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani to congratulate them on working together.\n"I assured them that the United States will continue to assist Iraqis in the formation of a free country because I fully understand that a free Iraq will be an important ally in the war on terror, will serve as a devastating defeat for the terrorists and al-Qaida and will serve as an example for others in the region who desire to be free," Bush said in Washington.\nBritish Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged that his country's troops would remain in Iraq until they were no longer needed.\n"The timetable is governed by the job being done. The new prime minister today made it very clear he, like us, wants to see Iraq in control of its own destiny," Blair said.\n"We have both got the same objectives. We want a transfer to the Iraqis as soon as we can but it has got to be based on the Iraqi force capability being up to the job. We need to make sure that we stay until the job is done," he said.\nThe prime minister said his government would use "maximum force in confronting the terrorists and the killers who are shedding blood" in Iraq.\nBut he also said it would try to reduce public support for insurgent groups by promoting national reconciliation, improving the country's collapsing infrastructure, and setting up a special protection force for Baghdad, one of Iraq's most violent cities.\nHe said Baghdad "must end its crisis of sectarian violence that is causing many families to flee their homes."\nTwo roadside bombs exploded nearly simultaneously in a crowded fruit market in New Baghdad, a mixed Shiite, Sunni Arab and Christian area in an eastern part of the capital, said police Lt. Ali Abbas.\nPolice found the first bomb and detonated it after trying to evacuate the market, Abbas said. But a second hidden bomb exploded a moment later, killing three civilians and wounding 23, all of whom had ignored the evacuation order, Abbas said.\nAt about 8 a.m., four gunmen in a speeding BMW killed Ali Abdul-Hussein al-Kinani, 57, who was standing outside his food store in the mostly Shiite neighborhood of Ubaidi, said police Maj. Mahir Hamad Moussa.\nIn southwestern Baghdad, a roadside bomb missed its target -- a police patrol -- but wounded five civilians at 8 a.m., in the mostly Sunni Arab neighborhood of Saidiyah, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein.\nThree other attacks took place in Dora, one of Baghdad's most violent areas. Mortar rounds hit two separate houses, killing a 4-year-old girl and wounding her mother in one dwelling, and injuring a man and his son in the other, police said. A roadside bomb narrowly missed a U.S. convoy but wounded three civilians.\nAl-Maliki's national unity government took office Saturday, five months after the election of Iraq's parliament and following prolonged bitter wrangling over the Cabinet posts.\nAt least 33 people were killed in a series of attacks across Iraq on Saturday, and police found the bodies of 22 Iraqis who apparently had been kidnapped and tortured by death squads that plague Iraq.