The attacks could have significant repercussions ¡ª particularly in the Baqouba area, a mixed Sunni Arab-Shiite region where sectarian tensions are running high.

"Such acts anger God and hurt the feeling of all honest Iraqis," Adnan al-Rubaie, a Shiite cleric in Baqouba, said in a telephone interview. "The goal is clear ¡ª to ignite a civil strife. God's curse on everybody who tries to create sedition in this country."

On Feb. 22 bombs heavily damaged the Golden Dome in Samarra, which holds the tomb of Imam Abdullah's father. That attack triggered a wave of reprisal attacks against Sunnis, dramatically escalating sectarian tension and pushing the country to the brink of civil war.

Iraqi lawmakers have been struggling for months to set up a new national unity government which they hope will calm sectarian and ethnic tensions and sap steam from the insurgency. But negotiations have been progressing at a glacial pace, leading some lawmakers to complain that the process was being hampered by self-interest and sectarianism.

Attacks outside Baghdad killed five Iraqis and a U.S. soldier, part of the undercurrent of daily violence marring the slow-moving political process.

Frustrated with such violence in the south, the governor of oil-rich Basra, Mohammed al-Waeli, asked his provincial council to fire the regional police chief and the defense ministry to sack an Iraqi army general.

In one success, Kurdish security forces in the north said they arrested five men who had escaped on May 9 from the U.S. military Fort Suse Theater internment facility near Sulaimaniyah, 160 miles northeast of Baghdad.

With a May 22 constitutional deadline to form the new Cabinet rapidly approaching, Prime Minister-designate Nouri al-Maliki urged an important Shiite party to rejoin talks on distributing ministry posts.

Parliament, which must approve the makeup of the government, was to convene Sunday, and some lawmakers had suggested that al-Maliki could present some of his Cabinet. He also has the option of appointing himself to head ministries such as defense and interior if the parties cannot agree on who will run them by the May 22 deadline.

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