Another Iraqi Journalist Killed

By: A bomb tore through in a minibus in a largely Shiite Baghdad neighborhood Monday, killing at least 20 people and wounding 18. Gunmen killed at least 10 people, including a television cameraman, a city councilman and a Sunni sheik, in executions and assassinations around Iraq .

Gen. John Abizaid, commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East, met with the country?s Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to "reaffirm President Bush ?s commitment" to success in Iraq, the government said. The two discussed the effects Iran and Syria were having on Iraq?s security, according to the Iraqi government statement.

In Washington, the blue-ribbon bipartisan commission trying to devise a new course for the war in Iraq was to meet with President Bush and other White House officials. The Iraq Study Group plans to announce its recommendations to Bush and Congress by the end of the year.

Hours earlier, Mohammed al-Ban, a cameraman for Iraq?s independent Al-Sharqiyah satellite television broadcaster, was gunned down leaving his home in the northern city of Mosul. His wife was wounded, police said.

At least 89 journalists have been killed in Iraq since hostilities began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count based on statistics kept by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

In Diyala, the increasingly volatile province northeast of Baghdad, council member Assim Mahmoud Abbas was killed in a drive-by shooting, council head Ibrahim Bajilan said. A fellow council member was wounded in the attack in Waziriyah, northeast of the capital.

Also in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, police reported finding the bodies of two women who had been shot to death. A civilian was reported gunned down as well.

On Sunday the Iraqi army reported discovering 50 bodies dumped behind a provincial electrical company near Baqouba, and an army official in Diyala said local forces and U.S. troops were heading to the area to recover the corpses. Gunmen had prevented their immediate retrieval. The army official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to provide details of the operation.

Al-Maliki blamed Sunni Muslims for the sectarian conflict on Sunday and promised to reshuffle his Cabinet after rebuking lawmakers for disloyalty.

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani was at the top of the list to lose his post in the coming Cabinet shake-up, key lawmakers from al-Maliki?s Islamic Dawa Party said, because police and security forces were failing to rein in the unbridled sectarian killing verging on civil war in Baghdad and the center of the country.

Al-Bolani, a Shiite who was chosen in June and a month after al-Maliki?s government was formed, is an independent. The United States demanded that the defense and interior posts be held by men without ties to the Shiite political parties that control militia forces.

Al-Maliki is under pressure both from his people and the United States to curb violence, with Washington hammering on him to disband Shiite militias believed responsible, through their death squads, for much of the killing.

The interior minister controls police and other security forces which already are infiltrated by the Badr Brigade and the Mahdi Army, the armed wing of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr?s political movement. Al-Maliki is dependent on both SCIRI and the Sadrists for his hold on power.

Defense Minister Abdul-Qadir al-Obaidi rejected calls by al-Maliki for the U.S. military to speed transfer of security operations throughout the country to the Iraqi army, saying his men still were too poorly equipped and trained to do the job.

"We are working hard to create a real army and we ask our government not to try to move too quickly because of the political pressure it feels," al-Obaidi said.

Al-Maliki wants the Americans confined to bases for him to call on in emergencies, but he boldly predicted his army could crush violence within six months if left alone to do the work.

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, last month said it would take 12 to 18 months before Iraq?s army was ready to take control of the country with some U.S. backup.