Updated at 8:12 p.m. EDT, May 20, 2010
At least 10 Iraqis were killed and 46 were wounded in a series of small attacks across the country. Meanwhile, the prime minister issued an incendiary statement basically telling the winning party in parliamentary elections to give up on heading the new government. Also, Turkish warplanes launched a two-hour air strike on about 50 suspected PKK rebel locations .
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki accused the Iraqiya list of wasting time by delaying the formation of the new government. By winning the most seats in the new parliament in March’s election, Iraqiya constitutionally earned the first crack at creating the government. Maliki, however, claims a post-election coalition formed by his State of Law party and rival Iraqi National Alliance gives the new group a greater right to form the government even without the 163 seats needed to govern outright. Maliki has also staged a set of challenges to the electoral outcome that seemed designed to keep him in the premiership. Maliki today attended a large gathering of Iraqi politicians, but the head of Iraqiya, Ayad Allawi, was conspicuously absent and traveling in Jordan.
In Mosul, a suicide bomber killed three people and wounded eight others when he detonated his vest at a checkpoint. At another checkpoint, gunmen killed two policemen. A civilian was shot dead separately. Two civilians were wounded in an attack on an army patrol.
In Baghdad, one civilian was wounded during a blast in Saidiya. A bombing at a Shabb stadium left five wounded. Six people were wounded during a bombing in the Jihad neighborhood. A bomb in Ghazaliya wounded two more. In the southwest, a roadside bomb wounded three people, while a sticky bomb in the north wounded a driver.
Four people were wounded during a bombing in Mahmoudiya.
A roadside bomb in Rashad killed a Sahwa member.
Six Sahwa members were wounded in a blast in Baiji.
In Kirkuk, a kidnapping attempt left one person dead and two wounded.
The son of a Sunni scholar was kidnapped from a home near Tikrit.
One civilian was killed and three more were wounded during a blast in Saidiya. Three al-Qaeda suspects were captured.
A bomb at a home in Yusufiya wounded three people.
Eight members of a suspected kidnapping gang were captured in Suleimaniyah.
Near Amara, ten suspects were arrested. A weapons cache was found.
