BAGHDAD — Car bombs killed at least 16 people and injured dozens Sunday in Baghdad and a Shiite holy city, casting doubt on U.S. hopes that formation of a new government alone would provide a quick end to the country's violence.
At least 26 others were killed or found dead Sunday, including a U.S. Marine mortally wounded in the insurgent bastion of Anbar province in western Iraq, police and the U.S. military said.
Some of the victims appeared to have been abducted and killed by sectarian "death squads" that target members of rival religious communities. The dead included three brothers whose charred bodies were found before dawn in Baghdad's Dora district, a mixed Sunni-Shiite area and one of the city's most violent.
The deadliest single attack occurred at midmorning when a suicide driver detonated his vehicle near an Iraqi army patrol leaving its base in the Sunni Arab neighborhood of Azamiyah, killing 10 people and injuring 15, most of them Iraqi soldiers, police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said.
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A half-hour earlier, a car bomb exploded near the Baghdad offices of the state-run al-Sabah newspaper, killing an employee, police Lt. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said. Officials believed the target was a police patrol that passed by shortly before the blast.
Mayhem in holy city
In Karbala, a Shiite holy city 60 miles south of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle near the main provincial government building, killing five people and wounding 19, police spokesman Rahman Mishawi said.
The bomber was unable to reach the government building because of concrete barricades and a police cordon and instead set off his explosives about 300 yards away, police said.
Elsewhere, three policemen were killed in a roadside bombing in the northern city of Mosul, police said. Two bodies with gunshot wounds were found in the center of Mosul late Sunday, police said.
In Baghdad, police and unknown gunmen battled for nearly an hour Sunday in the capital's Saydiyah district. Three policemen were wounded and three gunmen were arrested, police said.
One man was killed and another injured in an explosion Sunday evening at a bomb-making factory in the basement of a Sunni mosque in central Baghdad, the U.S. military said. A bomb exploded in a restaurant late Sunday in Muqdadiyah, 60 miles northeast of Baghdad, injuring dozens, provincial police said.
American troops also fired on a disused train station south of Ramadi, described in a U.S. statement as "a known hub of insurgent activity."
Hopes for unity government
U.S. officials have long contended that violence would subside if Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds believed they had a stake in a new unity government representing all the nation's religious and ethnic communities.
The framework of Iraq's new unity government was put in place last month with the selection of a president, vice presidents, prime minister and parliament speaker. Incoming Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, hopes to present his Cabinet to parliament by Wednesday.
Sectarian violence has forced about 14,700 Iraqi families — or about 88,000 people — to flee their homes, a senior Iraqi official said Sunday.
In London, the British Defense Ministry said "up to five" British personnel were killed in Saturday's helicopter crash in Basra. Britain has not confirmed reports that the Lynx helicopter was shot down.
● Deaths: 2,415
● Wounded: 17,874
No casualties identified Sunday.
Source: Department of Defense as of Friday.
