Curfew fails to curb Iraqi violence

Bombs and gunfire killed about 60 people as another daytime curfew failed to halt violence that has claimed nearly 200 lives since the destruction of a Shiite shrine set off a wave of retribution against Sunnis and pushed Iraq toward civil war.

In an unusual round of telephone diplomacy, US President George W. Bush spoke on Saturday with seven leaders of Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish political parties in a bid to defuse the sectarian crisis unleashed by the bombing of the Shiites’ Askariya shrine in Samarra.