BAGHDAD — A key Shiite Muslim bloc in Iraq's government pledged Sunday to quit over Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's refusal to set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, a move that would further weaken the country's leadership at a time of soaring sectarian violence.
The threat came on the heels of another bloody day in the capital, where at least 37 people died in bombings that underscored the failings of a U.S.-Iraqi security plan now in its third month. The victims included 17 Iraqis killed in a crowded market in a Shiite-dominated neighborhood, where two car bombs exploded nearly simultaneously. As people fled the chaos, mortar rounds rained down on them. Fifty people were wounded.
Nine more people were killed as they stood surveying the damage from a roadside bomb that had exploded in Baghdad's central Karada district. The bomb caused no casualties, but another one went off shortly afterward outside a popular smoothie shop, near where the crowd had gathered, causing the deaths and 17 injuries.
Five people also were killed in Karada when a minivan exploded, and six were killed in a Shiite neighborhood in southwest Baghdad when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a taxi.
The incidents all bore the hallmarks of the car bombings and suicide attacks blamed on Sunni Arab insurgents.
Political parties loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr blame the U.S. troop presence for the ongoing bloodshed. Maliki faces a major blow if he loses their backing. The bloc holds six Cabinet positions and about 30 seats in the parliament, where it has greatly bolstered the prime minister's Shiite-led alliance.
A fragile alliance
The bloc's ties to Maliki have helped ensure Sadr's cooperation with the security plan, despite the cleric's fierce opposition to its U.S. enforcers. But continued attacks by suspected Sunni Muslim insurgents on Shiite targets, and the arrests of some Sadr militia leaders in the security sweep, could prompt at least some in the militia to take up arms again if they are no longer hamstrung by political considerations.
"It is true the American troops have helped the Iraqis in getting rid of Saddam [Hussein] and his regime. However, we have reached a point where there are no means of understanding between the Americans and the demands of the Iraqi people," Ghufran Saidi, one of the bloc's members of parliament, said Sunday. "We have found that there is no use for our staying" in the government, he said.
