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Education official killed; al-Sadr calls for protests in Iraq

A car bomb exploded yesterday in central Iraq, killing five people, including four police officers on patrol, while gunmen killed an education official in Baghdad.

The car bomb in Khan Bani Saad also injured two police officers and three civilians.

In Baghdad, gunmen opened fire from a car, killing Hassib Zamil outside of the Education Ministry offices in the Sadr City neighborhood.

Late Friday, insurgents fired a rocket propelled grenade and shot at an armored vehicle used to transport US troops on a road leading to the dangerous airport highway.

Lawmakers held last-minute meetings on who would be the parliament speaker of the newly elected National Assembly. They remained deadlocked on which Sunni Arab candidate should take the job. Some have also called for naming Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as Iraq's new president during Sunday's session, a step that would bring Iraq closer to forming a new government.

On Friday, cleric Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samarrai of the influential Association of Muslim Scholars read an edict calling for Iraqis to join the new police and army forces. The edict, however, instructed enlistees to refrain from helping foreign troops against their own countrymen.

In the central city of Samarra, an explosion Friday blew away part of a wall on top of a minaret from a ninth century mosque.

Witnesses said two men climbed the 52-meters-tall minaret, then returned to the ground before the blast. The US military blamed insurgents. It was unclear why the minaret, one of Iraq's most recognized landmarks, was targeted. US troops have used it as a sniper position.

Friday, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on his supporters to stage a protest in Baghdad on April 9 to mark the second anniversary of US troops entering the capital. Sheik Hassan al-Edhari, an official at al-Sadr's Baghdad office, said the protesters will demand that the new Iraqi government set a timetable for withdrawing foreign troops and for trying Saddam.
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