Insurgents kill 12 in Iraq attacks

A SUICIDE car bomber targeted a busload of police recruits north of Baghdad yesterday, killing seven people, and gunmen in the capital killed five workers, police said.

Iraq's Kurdish president met with the Shi'ite prime minister in northern Iraq for talks on the formation of the country's next government.

At least three police recruits were killed by the car bomb in Baqouba, and another four people also died, although officials couldn't immediately say whether they were recruits or civilians.

In the capital, gunmen in two cars opened fire on labourers, killing five.

Elsewhere, a seven-ton truck slammed into a bus carrying civilian contractors on a US air base in the western Anbar region Sunday, the US military said yesterday. Four American civilian contractors were killed. The cause of the accident was under investigation. No hostile action was involved, the military said.

A convoy carrying Turkey's ambassador to Iraq was fired on as it sped through western Baghdad, damaging some of the vehicles.

Fuel resumed flowing at Iraq's largest oil refinery for the first time in nearly two weeks because of deteriorating security. The shutdown forced stations to ration petrol, creating long lines.

"We started [Sunday] to supply the tankers with oil products after the government promised to secure them along the highways," Ahmed Ibrahim Hamadi said yesterday.

Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum said yesterday he resigned after the government last week gave him a forced vacation and replaced him with Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi following criticisms about increased fuel prices.

Also yesterday, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and the ministers of defence and education were welcomed by President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, in Sulaimaniyah, 257 kilometres north-east of Baghdad.

Mr Al-Jaafari is a leading member of the United Iraqi Alliance, a religious coalition of majority Shi'ites that won the most votes in the December 15 parliamentary elections, according to preliminary results.

Sunni Arabs made their opening bid Sunday in what could be protracted negotiations to form a new government. Leaders of the minority's main political group, the Iraqi Accordance Front, travelled to the northern city of Irbil for a meeting with the president of the Kurdish region, Mazoud Barzani.

Mr Barzani met with Mr al-Jaafari and agreed on "essential principles for exerting efforts to form a broad-based government."