Iraqi leaders forge new political pact

[Leo 9]

Source: Houston Chronicle

Aug. 16, 2007, 6:40PM
Iraqi leaders forge new political pact


By STEVEN R. HURST Associated Press Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press

BAGHDAD — Iraq's political leaders emerged Thursday from three days of crisis talks with a new alliance that seeks to save the crumbling U.S.-backed government. But the reshaped power bloc included no Sunnis and immediately raised questions about its legitimacy as a unifying force.

The political gambit came as teams in northern Iraq tallied the grim figures from the deadliest wave of suicide attacks of the war and — in a rare moment of joy since Tuesday's devastation — pulled four children alive from the rubble.

"We didn't hear them calling out for help until moments before a bulldozer would have killed them as it cleared the rubble," said Saad Muhanad, a municipal council member in the Qahtaniya region, where four bomb-laden trucks turned clay and stone homes into tombs for hundreds belonging to a small religious group considered as infidels by hard-line Muslims.

Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said Thursday that at least 400 were dead — apparently all members of the ancient Yazidi sect that mixes elements of Islam, Christianity and other faiths. Some authorities outside the central government had said at least 500 people died and have not revised that figure downward.

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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/5060940.html

Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/5060940.html

[Help me help Earth]

1. Here is to hoping for the best.

Good to hear those kids were saved.