Car bombs, shootings kill 55 in Iraq

A spate of car bombings and shootings across Iraq killed at least 55 people yesterday, but Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said violence was on the decrease and that the country would never slide into a civil war.

A top government official said Mr Maliki planned to reshuffle his coalition cabinet just 100 days after it was formed because he wanted to root out disloyal or poorly performing ministers and rally factions behind his national reconciliation plan.

The official also told Reuters Iraq hoped its plans to attract investment and create jobs could stem a descent into civil war and that foreign leaders should back a UN economic package or face disaster for the entire Middle East.

Car bombs exploded in Baghdad, the town of Khallis north of the capital, the northern city of Kirkuk and Basra in the Shi'ite south, a day after Mr Maliki met tribal leaders to urge them to help stamp out sectarian violence and defeat insurgents.

"Violence has decreased and our security ability is increasing. We are not in civil war and will never be in civil war," Mr Maliki told CNN in a recorded interview yesterday. "What you see is an atmosphere of reconciliation."

In Khallis, a religiously mixed town, gunmen also stormed a market yesterday night, attacking a cafe and killing 14 people, police said.

In one of the worst attacks of the day, a bomb blew apart a minibus in a busy commercial road in central Baghdad, killing nine people and sending black smoke billowing into the air.

The minibus blast followed a car bomb attack on Iraq's best-selling newspaper, the government-owned al-Sabah, that killed two employees and badly damaged the building.

Editor-in-chief Falah al-Meshaal said the newspaper, part of the US-funded Iraqi Media Network that Sunni insurgents have attacked before, would be published as normal today.

In Basra, where Mr Maliki has imposed a state of emergency to deal with increasing violence fuelled by tensions between rival Shi'ite Muslim factions, seven people were killed by a motorcycle bomb in a market, officials said.

Police said 20 bodies had been found in parts of Baghdad on Saturday. Some bore signs of torture and most had been killed by gunshots to the head, a typical feature of the sectarian bloodshed between Iraq's Shi'ite majority and Sunni Arabs.

Thousands of US and Iraqi troops have launched a major operation in Baghdad to try to bring peace to the capital. Sectarian and insurgent violence claimed the lives of more than 3,000 Iraqis last month.

Mr Maliki won support for his reconciliation plan from the tribal leaders gathered in Baghdad on Saturday, but it is unclear how influential they will be among Iraqis increasingly turning to religious leaders for guidance.

No major Sunni guerilla group has signed up to Mr Maliki's plan and much of the violence now gripping the capital is sectarian. Sunnis say it is fuelled by militias linked to parties within the prime minister's Shi'ite-led government.