BAGHDAD (AFX) - Car bombings and shootings killed 15 people and wounded 100 in Baghdad today, while Washington stepped up pressure for Shiite premier designate Jawad al-Maliki to form a government and halt Iraq's slide into civil war.
Insurgents set off seven car bombs, two of them at a Baghdad university, security officials said. Five people died in the coordinated attack on the Mustansiriya University, which also wounded 25.
A car bomb in the north Baghdad neighbourhood of Bab al-Muhaddam killed three people and wounded, while another in Tahrir Square in the city centre wounded 15.
Two car bombs went off within minutes of each other in east Baghdad, wounding nine. A seventh bomb exploded in the upscale Mansur neighborhood, wounding seven.
Six people died in a series of shootings in south Baghdad's restive Al-Dura district, while one civilian was killed near the restive city of Baquba north of the capital.
Last night, police found the bodies of 15 young men near Abu Ghraib on Baghdad's western outskirts. 'All the men had bullets in their heads,' an interior ministry official said.
The latest wave of violence came as US President George W. Bush stepped up pressure on Maliki to quickly form a national unity government.
On Saturday the political deadlock appeared broken when Maliki was nominated by the dominant Shiite bloc, the United Iraq Alliance, as a compromise candidate after the withdrawal of outgoing Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's candidacy.
Yesterday, Bush telephoned Maliki, as well as re-selected President Jalal Talabani and new parliament speaker Mahmud Mashhadani, urging them to form a national unity government.
US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad also put pressure on Maliki.
'We want him to form as quickly as possible a good, strong cabinet,' Khalilzad said Sunday. 'It is important that there be a cabinet made up of ministers who will work for all Iraqis and bring Iraqis together.'
Khalilzad renewed calls for the Shiite militias, which have been behind much of the recent sectarian violence, to be dismantled.
'We regard the unauthorised military formation as infrastructure of civil war,' he said. 'Military formations must be in the hands of authorised Iraqi government forces.'
Maliki, considered a hardliner, has vowed to rein in militias by integrating them into the security forces.
'Arms must be in the hands of the government. There is a law to integrate militias into the security forces,' he said.
Sunni leaders called for the premier designate to form a broad coalition.
'We envisage that the new government will integrate all the parliamentary blocs and unite communities from outside parliament also. Only then can we say that we have a national unity government,' said Zhafer al-Ani, spokesman for the main Sunni parliamentary bloc, the National Concord Front.
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