Two bombs exploded in northern Iraq on Friday, killing at least 22 people and wounding 26, police said. It was the first major attack by suspected insurgents since bombings in Baghdad's Sadr City Shiite district killed more than 200 people the day before during widespread sectarian violence in the capital.
Followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr warned Friday they will suspend their membership in parliament and the Cabinet if Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki meets with U.S. President George W. Bush in Jordan next week, a member of parliament said. Bush and al-Maliki were scheduled to meet Wednesday and Thursday in Amman, the Jordanian capital.
The al-Sadr bloc in parliament and government is the back bone of al-Maliki's political support, and its withdrawal, if only temporarily, would be a severe blow to the prime minister's already shaky hold on power.
Legislator Qusai Abdul-Wahab, an al-Sadr follower, said in a statement that U.S. forces were to blame for Thursday's bombings in Sadr City that killed 215 people and wounding 257 because they failed to provide security.
"We say occupation forces are fully responsible for these acts, and we call for the withdrawal of occupation forces or setting a timetable for their withdrawal," Abdul-Wahab said.
Al-Sadr's followers hold six Cabinet seats and have 30 members in the 275-member parliament.
The attack in Tal Afar, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad, involved explosives hidden in a parked car and in a suicide belt worn by a pedestrian that detonated simultaneously outside a car dealership at 11 a.m., said police Brig. Khalaf al-Jubouri. He said the casualties — 22 dead, 26 wounded — were expected to rise.
And feeding 20,000 more troops into this meatgrinder -- as St. John McCain, a man obviously willing to resort to human sacrifice if it means he'll get into the White House in 2008, wants to do -- is going to reduce this kind of violence, exactly how?
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