Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki yesterday welcomed a pact to end violence between the country's two most powerful Shiite leaders, Moqtada al-Sadr and Abdel Aziz al-Hakim.
Sadr, the leader of Iraq's most popular Shiite movement, and Hakim, the head of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), a pillar of Maliki's ruling coalition, announced their deal on Saturday.
"We received news of the signing of an agreement between the leaders of SIIC and the Sadr Movement with deep comfort," Maliki said in a statement.
"This agreement came at the right time and expressed a high sense of religious and national responsibility," said Maliki, himself a Shiite who leads the Dawa party at the head of the ruling coalition.
Sadr's six ministers have boycotted Maliki's government since April and his spokesman said yesterday that the accord did not signify a turnaround on the political front.
But an official in al-Sadr's office in Najaf called the agreement a "fresh start."
The three-point agreement appeared to be aimed at reining in rival militants loyal to al-Sadr and al-Hakim before the fighting erupts into a full-fledged conflict that could shatter the relative unity of the Shiite-led governing apparatus.
Meanwhile, bombings across Baghdad killed at least nine Iraqi civilians and wounded 12 in three separate attacks early yesterday, Iraqi police officials said.
The incidents began about 7am when a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol exploded near a minibus carrying workers into central Baghdad. Three people were killed and four wounded in the Shiite-dominated neighborhood of Baladiyat in the eastern part of the capital, said a police official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The inside of the mangled minibus was soaked in blood, the metal hulk was pummeled by shrapnel and the windows were shattered, TV footage showed.
A half-hour later, in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Dora in southern Baghdad, a second roadside bomb targeting a US patrol missed its target, killing three Iraqi civilians and wounding three, police said.
And in the downtown commercial area of Salihiyah, a bomb planted in the back of a car parked near the Iranian embassy exploded about 8:30am, killing three Iraqi passers-by and wounding five, police said. Dozens of people gathered to examine the smoldering wreckage at the side of the road, TV footage showed.
In other developments, the US military commander in Iraq has stepped up accusations that Iran was stoking violence in Iraq and said Tehran's ambassador to Baghdad was a member of the Revolutionary Guards Qods force.
General David Petraeus, speaking at a US military base near the Iranian border on Saturday, said Iran was giving advanced weaponry to militias in Iraq.
"They are responsible for providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the direction for operations that have indeed killed US soldiers," Petraeus told a small group of reporters when asked if the Iranian government was responsible for killing US troops.
"There is no question about the connection between Iran and these components, [the] attacks that have killed our soldiers," he said.
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