Fresh wave of attacks leave 17 dead, 40 injured

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BAGHDAD -- Insurgents launched fresh attacks in Baghdad and northern Iraq yesterday, killing at least 17 Iraqis and wounding more than 40 in a second day of violence aimed at shaking the country's newly formed government.

At a meeting of Iraq's neighbors in Turkey, meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the violence was "not solely the concern of the Iraqis but ours, as well."

Some of the worst attacks occurred in the capital, still reeling from an onslaught Friday, when at least 17 bombs exploded in Iraq and killed 52 persons, including five U.S. soldiers.

At least five car bombings occurred in the Baghdad area yesterday, U.S. military spokesman Greg Kaufman said. He had no information on casualties.

The bombings included a suicide attack that targeted a joint U.S. military and Iraqi police patrol in western Baghdad, killing one Iraqi and wounding seven, including four policemen, police Maj. Mousa Abdul Karim said.

Minutes later, another suicide bomber plowed into a civilian convoy near the offices of the National Dialogue Council, a coalition of 10 Sunni Arab factions that had been negotiating for a stake in Iraq's new Shi'ite-dominated government. The blast killed at least one council guard and injured 18 other Iraqis, said police Capt. Kadhim Abbas at al-Yarmouk Hospital.

A third suicide car bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol exploded near the Mohammad Rasoul Allah Mosque in eastern Baghdad, killing two Iraqi women and a girl and seriously wounding four soldiers, police Lt. Col. Ahmed Abboud Effait said.

Two Iraqis -- a policeman and a former official in Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party -- also died in shootings yesterday in Baghdad, police said.

U.S. officials had hoped Iraq's new government, which was approved Thursday and will take office on Tuesday, would help dent support for the militants within the Sunni Arab minority that dominated under Saddam and is believed to be driving the insurgency.

In another development, investigators have uncovered a large grave that may contain the bodies of 1,500 Kurds killed in the 1980s. It could produce evidence needed to prosecute ousted leader Saddam Hussein and his top lieutenants for mass killings during his regime.

International forensic experts this week examined the mass grave site in Samawa, on the Euphrates River about 230 miles southeast of Baghdad. Many of those buried in the 18 trenches were believed to be Kurds killed in 1987 and 1988 during a scorched-earth campaign, said Gregg Nivala, from the U.S. government's Regime Crimes Liaison Office.

"These were not combatants," he said. "They were women and children." It is estimated that more than 60 percent were under the age of 18.

During the campaign known as Anfal, or "spoils of war" in Arabic, hundreds of thousands of Kurds were killed or expelled from northern Iraq. Departing Iraqi Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin, himself a Kurd, said half a million people perished and 182,000 are missing.