String of car bombs kills at least 60 north of Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Three suicide attackers exploded a string of near-simultaneous car bombs in a mainly Shiite town Thursday, killing at least 60 people and wounding 70, Elsewhere, a roadside bomb killed five U.S. soldiers fighting in a hotbed of Iraq's insurgency.

The attacks were part of a new surge of violence ahead of an Oct. 15 referendum on Iraq's constitution, whose passage is crucial to prospects for starting a withdrawal of American troops. The U.S. ambassador was struggling to negotiate changes to the charter in hopes of winning Sunni Arab support.

Sunni insurgents have vowed to wreck the vote, declaring "all-out war" on the Shiite majority that dominates Iraq's government. Moderate Sunni Arab leaders called on their community to vote against the charter, saying it will fragment Iraq and leave them weak compared to Shiites and Kurds.

Also Thursday, Sunnis said U.S. troops raided the homes of two Sunni leaders, angering sect members and reinforcing their feeling of alienation in the political process.

The car bombs exploded just before sunset in downtown Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, hitting a bank, a vegetable market and another location, Police Lt. Ghafil Hassan said.

Still counting

At least 60 were killed, and among the 70 wounded were the police chief and four officers, said Dr. Khaled al-Azawi of Balad Hospital. Hassan said the toll could reach 75 dead and 100 wounded, saying there were body parts at the scene not accounted for at the hospital. A major U.S. air base is located on Balad's outskirts.

Meanwhile, in Ramadi -- a center of insurgent activity 80 miles west of Baghdad -- a roadside bomb exploded during combat Wednesday, killing five Americans, a Marine statement said. It was the deadliest single attack on U.S. forces since a roadside bomb killed 14 Marines in the town of Haditha on Aug. 3.

The Ramadi blast brought to 1,934 the number of U.S. service members who have died since Iraq's war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

More than 140 people -- including 13 U.S. service members -- have been killed in the past four days.

In Washington, the top American commander in Iraq said Thursday that the process of withdrawing U.S. troops depends greatly on the results of the referendum and elections set to take place if the constitution passes.

"The next 75 days are going to be critical," Gen. George Casey told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.

Sunni Arab success in rejecting the draft constitution would set back the political process for months, prolonging Iraq's political stability.

Sunnis make up only 20 percent of the population, but they could defeat the constitution because of a loophole in voting rules: If two-thirds of voters in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces vote "no," the referendum fails -- even if an overall majority approves. There are four provinces where Sunni Arabs could potentially cross that margin.

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad has been shuttling between all sides, trying to secure last-minute changes to the draft, which parliament approved Sept. 18 after tough negotiations.

He has met rejections from Shiites and Kurds on some proposed changes, and some Sunni officials said the proposals were still not enough.

Further straining the process, Sunni officials said U.S. forces raided the Baghdad homes of Adnan al-Dulaimi and Harith al-Obeidi, senior officials in the Conference for Iraq's People, a prominent Sunni political group.

'Attacking a castle'

Al-Dulaimi, 73, said soldiers in tanks and Humvees broke into his home at 2:30 a.m., put him and his family in a guest room and searched the house, arresting four of his bodyguards and confiscating weapons he said were licensed.

"It was if they were attacking a castle, not the home of a normal person who advises Iraq's interim government and has called for reconciliation and renounced sectarianism," said al-Dulaimi, his group's secretary-general and an adviser to the Iraqi president on religious affairs.

Al-Dulaimi said the Americans were acting on a false tip that his bodyguards had links to insurgents. The U.S. military said it conducted several raids Thursday in the areas of Baghdad where the leaders live but could not identify the homes involved.

Sunni leaders complain the constitution does not emphasize Iraq's unity and Arab character. They say its federal system -- which would allow Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north to form mini-states -- will isolate Sunnis in a weak middle region, cheated of oil resources.

Khalilzad met with the top Kurdish leaders, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani, on Wednesday and conveyed three changes sought by Sunnis, said Fuad Massoum, a Kurdish member of the constitutional commission.

Massoum said the changes concern: confirming the use of Arabic along with Kurdish in the northern Kurdistan region; adding a clause stating that "Iraq is a single nation, and the constitution guarantees its unity"; and allowing parliament to alter the constitution by a two-thirds vote rather than requiring a referendum.

Khalilzad earlier presented the same proposals to Shiite leaders, said Humam Hamoudi, the Shiite head of the constitutional committee.

Both Kurds and Shiites rejected the third proposal, Massoum and Hamoudi said. The Kurds want the second proposal rephrased to "federal nation" instead of "single nation," though they accept the first provision, Massoum said.

Even so, one of the main Sunni Arab parties, the Iraqi Islamic Party, said that acceptance of all three changes would not be enough for some Sunni leaders.

Party official Nasser al-Ani said his side had put forward 12 proposals, including changes in the federal system that Shiites and Kurds have insisted cannot be altered.

"If the American ambassador revealed only three of our 12 demands, this would not be satisfactory," he said.

A U.S. official confirmed that Khalilzad was seeking "tweaks" in about a half-dozen points in the draft "to maximize the public support." He said agreement was closest on the use of Arabic in Kurdistan and on "Iraq's identity as a nation state" but would not discuss the other points.

The changes "will absolutely help, because the Sunni Arabs' main concerns have been the unity of Iraq," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussion.