BAGHDAD — U.S. and Iraqi forces began a major helicopter and ground attack Thursday on an insurgent stronghold near Samarra, the Sunni Arabdominated city where the bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine last month set off waves of sectarian bloodshed across the country.
The assault was underway 80 miles north of Baghdad as the parliament elected three months ago held its inaugural session here amid extraordinary security and sharp exchanges that reflected Iraq's deepening divisions. The meeting was quickly adjourned so that political bosses could resume U.S.-guided talks on the makeup of a new government's leadership.
The joint military operation and the new parliament are elements of an American strategy to start bringing home U.S. troops, who arrived here nearly three years ago to topple President Saddam Hussein. Iraq's military has been taking a bigger role in fighting a Sunni-led insurgency made up in part of Hussein's supporters.
And under U.S. diplomatic pressure, leaders of all parliamentary factions are struggling to avert full-scale sectarian conflict by holding talks aimed at bringing minority Sunni representatives into a broad coalition government along with majority Shiites, ethnic Kurds and secular-minded parties.
Adnan Pachachi, at 83 the oldest member of parliament, underscored the urgency of the task in unusually blunt remarks to his colleagues after he had been appointed temporary speaker.
"The country is going through dangerous times ... and the perils come from every direction," he said during the nationally televised session.
"We have to prove to the world that there will not be civil war among our people. The danger is still there, and our enemies are ready for us.
"We're still at the beginning of the road to democracy," he added, "and we're stumbling."
The country's billowing violence Thursday reached the northern region of Kurdistan, long a haven of calm. Three people were shot to death in Halabja as hundreds of protesters stormed and set fire to a museum honoring Kurdish victims of a 1988 poison gas attack on the town by Hussein's military.
The clash between Kurdish militiamen and Kurds angry at their own leaders was a stunning challenge to the autonomous Kurdish government that has ruled the region for 15 years. The protesters used the anniversary commemoration of the massacre to call attention to shortages of water and electricity in the town, where they said the museum was the only new building constructed in the past decade.
