BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The political bloc loyal to the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr announced yesterday that it had decided to resume participation in the Iraqi parliament.
Also, U.S. and Iraqi officials announced a ban on truck traffic into Kirkuk and proposed digging a trench around the northern city, where a series of bombs killed at least 76 people a day earlier.
The idea of encircling the city with a trench underscored fears that the violence in Baghdad and neighboring Diyala province will overtake the once-peaceful north as increased U.S. troop levels drive insurgents from the capital. Police in a village of Diyala province said yesterday that they suspected Sunni Muslim militants chased out of the provincial capital of Baqouba were to blame for the massacre of 28 Shiites.
The Shiite political bloc, which holds 30 of the 275 seats in parliament, walked out in protest on June 13 after the second attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra, saying the government was not doing enough to protect the shrine.
That protest, along with a separate Sunni boycott, left the parliament unable to work on important legislation demanded by the United States. Members of the Sadr bloc account for a quarter of the seats in the governing Shiite alliance of the prime minister, Nouri Kamal al-Maliki.
Nassar al-Rubaei, a spokesman for the Sadr legislators, said the parliament was responding to demands that it press the government to protect shrines, Reuters reported.
In April, the Sadr bloc also withdrew its six ministers from al-Maliki's Cabinet, to protest the prime minister's failure to set a deadline for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.
The Shiites were slain Monday night in Duwailiya. Police Col. Raghib Radhi said he believed the attackers had come from Baqouba, where a U.S. military offensive launched last month has targeted insurgents loyal to al-Qaida in Iraq.
In Baghdad, at least 24 people died yesterday in two major car bombings, including one in the parking lot of the Iranian Embassy. The site is near the well-fortified Green Zone, which houses U.S. and Iraqi government offices, and it was the third time in two months that bombs have been placed there. Four people died in the attack.
The other 20 victims were killed when a bomb went off in eastern Baghdad near a police patrol, police said.
The unidentified bodies of 24 people, suspected of being victims of sectarian death squads, were found scattered across the capital, police reported.
At a meeting in Kirkuk, officials announced the indefinite truck ban and the digging of the trench, which already had been planned on the southwest and western edges of the city. There was no indication when the barrier would be finished. Similar plans have been suggested for protecting Baghdad over the years but never have come to fruition.
Kurdish leaders are angling to make Kirkuk part of the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan and could be driven to isolate the city. The Iraqi constitution calls for a referendum to be held by the end of the year on whether Kirkuk should remain part of Iraq or join Kurdistan. Few expect the referendum to take place as scheduled because of logistical issues, but that has not lessened Kurdish desire to claim the city as their own.
The U.S. military announced another major offensive in western Anbar province yesterday involving 9,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops and focusing on towns on the western side of the Euphrates River. A military statement said Operation Mawtini had begun Saturday and was aimed at preventing insurgents from establishing new bases in the area.
During a visit to the province's capital, Ramadi, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, said such operations have led to a "sea change" in Iraq in terms of better security in Baghdad and elsewhere. Several operations targeting Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias are under way in the so-called belts around Baghdad and began last month as the last of 28,500 additional troops sent by President Bush to Iraq settled into place.
Sunni-dominated Anbar has seen a turnaround as tribal sheiks there, who once harbored anti-U.S. militants, have turned against them and are cooperating with U.S. forces. Al-Maliki has expressed discomfort with the idea of arming tribes, saying this could create new militias that might one day turn on his Shiite-led government.
Tina Susman writes for the Los Angeles Times. The New York Times News Service contributed to this article.