22 killed Saturday in car bombings

Two American contract workers died; Iraqi Cabinet vacancies filled.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Two suicide car bombs exploded in a central Baghdad square Saturday, killing 22 people, including two American contract workers, as Iraqi political leaders agreed on nominees for six of the seven vacant Cabinet posts.
The attacks were part of a surge in violence that has killed nearly 300 people -- many of them Iraqi soldiers and police -- since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's new government was sworn in April 28.
At least 36 Iraqis and three Americans were wounded in the attack in Tahrir Square, where shops were damaged and sport utility vehicles were burned by the blasts, Iraqi and U.S. officials said. The remains of mutilated bodies were seen lying in the street as fire trucks fought the blaze, which sent a large plume of black smoke up into the sky.
Iraqi police initially said the attack involved one suicide car bomb, but U.S. Embassy spokesman Bob Callahan later said there were two. He said the two Americans killed were security contract workers, but he did not identify the company they worked for.
The Americans were traveling through the square in a three-car convoy that was hit on both ends by the suicide bombers, the U.S. military said. The U.S. Embassy said the three Americans did not appear to have suffered life-threatening injuries.
Al-Kindi Hospital in Baghdad said it had received four bodies and 29 wounded victims from the square, which is known for a large statue of Iraqi soldiers breaking through chains to freedom. Two more bodies and seven injured people were sent to nearby Ibn al-Nafis Hospital, officials said.
The blasts damaged al-Aqida Secondary School in the square and a minibus driving by with students from a nearby school, and five schoolgirls were wounded, officials said.
Iman Norman rushed to al-Kindi Hospital to be with her wounded 12-year-old daughter, Lana, who was aboard the minibus. Norman said the students escaped through the bus' windows in their bloodied uniforms after the bomb damaged its doors. Lana's injury was not serious, but one student lost an eye, Norman said.
Death toll rising
Elsewhere, a U.S. Marine was killed by a bomb Saturday during combat in Karmah, 50 miles west of Baghdad, the military said. At least 1,593 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Also, U.S. and Iraqi forces said they captured a key associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of the terrorist group Al-Qaida in Iraq, in western Iraq on April 26. Ghassan Muhammad Amin Husayn Al-Rawi had helped the group by arranging meetings and helping foreign insurgents move in Iraq, the force said.
Al-Jaafari had hoped to dent support for the insurgency by drawing members of the disaffected Sunni Arab minority into the new government. But negotiations dragged on for months as members of his Shiite-dominated alliance repeatedly rejected Sunni candidates for the 37-member Cabinet because of ties to Saddam Hussein's regime, which brutally repressed Shiites and Kurds.
Cabinet vacancies
Al-Jaafari said Saturday that leaders have agreed on who will fill five vacant Cabinet ministries and one of two deputy prime minister slots.
President Jalal Talabani and his two vice presidents have signed off on the names, which will be submitted to the 275-member National Assembly for a vote today, al-Jaafari told reporters. He declined to give the names.
"All the ministries have been filled and the presidential council has approved them," al-Jaafari said. "The names will be given to the National Assembly on Sunday, and you will hear the names then."
So far, al-Jaafari's Cabinet includes just four Sunni ministers. But members of his United Iraqi Alliance have said at least three more Cabinet posts -- including the key Defense Ministry -- are destined for Sunnis.
On Saturday, Jala Aldin al-Saghir, a senior Shiite cleric and lawmaker, said the top candidate for defense minister was Saadoun al-Duleimi, a former army lieutenant colonel who left Iraq in 1984 and lived in exile in Saudi Arabia until the fall of Saddam in April 2003. Al-Duleimi comes from the predominantly Sunni city of Anbar in the tense western Anbar province.
Alliance lawmakers also said the oil ministry will go to Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, a Shiite who held the post in the former U.S.-appointed Governing Council.
Independent Shiite lawmaker Mihsin Shlash is expected to be the electricity minister.
Recent attacks
Some lawmakers have said the delay in forming the government has emboldened the insurgency, prompting it to unleash a wave of well-coordinated attacks in recent weeks.
On Friday, car bombs struck a market south of Baghdad and a police bus in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, killing at least 25 people. Iraqi soldiers also clashed with insurgents in the northern city of Tal Afar, and more than a dozen bodies were uncovered in a garbage dump on the outskirts of Baghdad -- some of them blindfolded and shot in the head.
Also, police dug up at least 12 bodies from the garbage dump on the northeastern outskirts of Baghdad, officials said. Four more bodies were recovered Saturday, according to an Associated Press photographer at the scene.
Scavengers looking for scrap metal and other items to sell stumbled across the first victims, who were found in shallow graves and seemed to have been killed recently, police and soldiers said. Some were blindfolded and had been shot in the head.
Families collected 14 bodies from Baghdad's main morgue Saturday and buried them in Madain, 12 miles southeast of the capital.
The brother of one victim, Abdul Razzaq Mutlak, said they were Sunni farmers who came to Baghdad to sell their produce. Early Thursday, men wearing police uniforms came to Jamila market and took the victims away in three vehicles, said Mutlak, who claimed to have been with his brother at the time this happened. Police officials did not immediately respond to the claim.