IRAQ Despite curfew, attacks leave 60 people dead

At least six people were killed by a car bomb in Karbala.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Bombs and gunfire killed about 60 people as another daytime curfew Saturday 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, President Bush spoke 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.
Bush "encouraged them to continue to work together to thwart the efforts of the perpetrators of the violence to sow discord among Iraq's communities," said Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the White House's National Security Council.
Reprisal attacks that followed the Wednesday blast in Samarra have derailed talks on forming new Iraqi government and threaten Washington's goal of building up a self-sufficient Iraq free of U.S. military involvement.
A second straight day of curfew in Baghdad and three surrounding provinces kept the city relatively calm, raising hopes the worst of the crisis was past. Authorities lifted the curfew in the areas outside Baghdad but decreed an all-day vehicle ban Sunday for the capital and its suburbs.
"I think the danger of civil war as a result of this attack has diminished, although I do not believe we are completely out of danger yet," U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters Saturday night.
Nevertheless, bloodshed continued.
Violence
A car bomb exploded in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, killing at least six people, hospital officials said. Gunmen broke into a Shiite home northeast of Baghdad and massacred 13 male members, police said.
Bodies of 14 Iraqi police commandos were found near their three burned vehicles near a Sunni mosque in southwestern Baghdad, police Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi said. Two rockets slammed into Baghdad's Shiite slum, Sadr City, killing three people, including a child, and wounding seven, police said.
Two Iraqi security officers guarding the funeral of an Al-Arabiya television correspondent Atwar Bahjat were killed and four other people were wounded when a car bomb exploded as mourners left a cemetery in western Baghdad. Bahjat was slain Wednesday along with two colleagues after covering the Samarra shrine bombing.
Earlier, shooting broke out as the funeral procession was carrying her coffin near the home of Harith al-Dhari, head of the Association of Muslim Scholars, a prominent Sunni clerical group. One policeman was killed and two people were wounded in the shooting, police said.
At least 21 other people died in small-scale shootings and bombings in Baghdad and western areas of the city, according to police and hospital reports.
Gunmen also shot at two Sunni mosques in Baghdad on Saturday, police said. And two rockets damaged a Shiite shrine late Friday in Tuz Khormato, 130 miles north of Baghdad, police and witnesses said.
The crisis has distracted attention from the approaching deadline set by the kidnappers of American journalist Jill Carroll, abducted Jan. 7 in Baghdad. Carroll, a freelancer for the Christian Science Monitor, was last seen on a videotape broadcast Feb. 10 by a Kuwaiti television station. It said the kidnappers threatened to kill her unless the United States met unspecified demands by Sunday.
"There are no new developments on her case so far because we are busy with a lot of things right now," Deputy Interior Minister Hussein Kamal said Saturday. "We know about the deadline and we hope that we can reach her before they manage to kill her."