Iraq's parliament speaker said in a nationally televised speech Tuesday that the new government's top priority will be ending widespread bloodshed in cities such as Baghdad. But insurgents launched new attacks, killing at least seven Iraqis and a U.S. soldier.

An Iraqi soldier secures an armored vehicle used by a private security company, damaged in roadside bomb explosion in Baghdad, Tuesday, May 2, 2006. [AP]

The worst attack involved a bomb hidden in a parked minibus that exploded in Baghdad's main wholesale market, killing two Iraqis and wounding five, police said.

In another development, the U.S. command announced that Iraq's Central Criminal Court had convicted 12 suspected insurgents in April of crimes such as joining a terrorist group. They included two men who were given life sentences for joining al-Qaida in Iraq operations: Hassan Abdullah Muhsin and Mohammed Dhaher Ibrahim Yassen Jazzah.

"Not an hour passes without Iraqis being stricken by the killing of our sons and loved ones in Baghdad and other areas, by booby traps, kidnappings, assassinations, armed clashes, roadside bombs and other brutal terrorist attacks," parliament speaker Mahmud Dawood al-Mashhadani, a Sunni Arab, said in a speech on state-run Iraqiya television.

Thousands of Iraqis have been killed in attacks by Sunni-led insurgent groups, foreign ones such as al-Qaida in Iraq, and militias aligned with Iraq's Sunni and Shiite political parties. Sectarian killings by death squads also mean that the tortured bodies of kidnapped Iraqi civilians are discovered on the streets of cities such as Baghdad nearly every day.

U.S. officials hope the new Iraqi government, expected to be finalized this month, will be able to calm sectarian tensions and lure many minority Sunni Arabs away from the insurgency so U.S. and other international troops can begin heading home.

Al-Mashhadani said that is his hope, too.

He said all Iraqis must renounce violence and that Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish political parties must rule "by a common vision," and build police and military forces that can improve security and pave the way for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Tuesday's worst attack occurred in central Baghdad when the bomb hidden in the minibus exploded in Shorja, a market where wholesalers use warehouses, stalls and shops to sell food, clothing and house products to businessmen and shoppers. At least two Iraqis were killed and five wounded, said Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohamadwi, an Interior Ministry policeman.

Baghdad is filled with privately owned minibuses that charge small fees to take citizens around the often-crowded streets of the capital.

A roadside bomb killed the U.S. soldier at about 9:50 p.m. Monday, about 40 miles south of Baghdad. The area is part of the infamous "Triangle of Death" and the scene of many ambushes of U.S. and Iraqi troops, foreigners and Shiite civilians.

That bombing raised to at least 2,406 the number of members of the U.S. military who have died since the beginning of the war in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

It was the first reported U.S. fatality in May. In April, 70 American servicemen died in Iraq, the highest monthly figure since November, when 84 were killed.

Monday's deadliest insurgent attack in Iraq occurred in Madain, a Shiite town 14 miles southeast of Baghdad, when a bomb exploded in an outdoor market, killing four Iraqis and wounding two.