20 killed despite Iraqi PM’s peace plea

IRAQI Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki yesterday called for Shi’ites and Sunnis to use the Islamic holy month of Ramadan to put aside their differences, while authorities reported that at least 20 people were killed in violence across the country.

Al-Maliki’s plea for peace came the same day as Saddam Hussein’s defence team said they would boycott the ousted dictator’s trial, and a day after a retaliatory bombing killed dozens of Shi’ites in the capital.

Meanwhile, violence persisted across Iraq despite heightened security for Ramadan.

The Health Ministry in northern Baghdad was hit by two mortar shells.

As police patrolled the area later, a roadside bomb exploded killing six people, including four policemen.

In eastern Baghdad, a car bomb targeting another police patrol killed five people and wounded 17. A car bombing next to an army patrol in northern Baghdad killed two Iraqi soldiers.

An Iraqi soldier was gunned down in his car in Baghdad yesterday morning, and two Iraqi soldiers were killed in a suicide bomb Attack in Tal Afar 260 miles northwest of Baghdad.

Authorities also discovered 13 bodies, victims of sectarian death squads.

In Tikrit, the severed heads of 10 Iraqi soldiers that were tossed into a crowded market by gunmen.

On Saturday, a bombing in the Shi’ite slum of Sadr City killed 38 people and wounded 42.

Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein’s chief lawyer said the defence team will boycott his genocide trial “indefinitely” because of alleged violations by the Iraqi court trying him.

Khalil Al-Dulaimi cited the replacement of the chief judge in the trial last week as one reason the defence team was boycotting.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki removed Judge Abdullah al-Amiri after he angered Kurds by declaring Saddam was “not a dictator”.

Al-Dulaimi said replacing the judge was a “flagrant violation of the law because it was dictated by the government and not the court”.