U.S. & World News

BAGHDAD (CBS News) ― Four American soldiers were killed and four others were wounded in two attacks in Baghdad, the U.S. command said Wednesday, as a bomb in a Shiite neighborhood of the capital killed at least 11 Iraqis.

Three American troops were killed and two were wounded by a roadside bomb in east Baghdad, the military said in a statement. According to the statement, the bomb was an explosively-formed penetrator, a type which the U.S. says Iran has been supplying to Shiite militias, a charge the Iranians deny.

The U.S. said the blast occurred Tuesday in east Baghdad but gave no further details.

However, a U.S. Humvee was seen burning Tuesday at an intersection in Mashtal section of eastern Baghdad.

In another attack Tuesday, one soldier was killed and two others injured during combat operations in the west of the capital, the U.S. command said. No further details were immediately available.

A roadside bomb rocked an eastern Baghdad Shiite neighborhood early Wednesday, killing at least 11 people and injuring 19 others when it exploded next to buses used by morning commuters, police and hospital officials said.

Last week, anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered a six-month suspension of operations by his Mahdi Army militia. U.S. officials believe mainstream Mahdi forces have generally stuck by the order but breakaway factions of the militia are continuing attacks.

Also Wednesday, embattled Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met behind closed-doors with Iraq's top Shiite cleric in Najaf to brief him over efforts to fill Cabinet jobs vacated when ministers from the largest Sunni Arab bloc and al-Sadr's movement pulled out to protest the prime minister's policies.

(AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
After the morning bombing, just before 8 a.m. in the neighborhood of Baladiyat, blood stained the ground around a small crater caused by the explosion.

Video from Associated Press Television News showed the scene strewn with broken glass and littered with people's shoes and other items.

Nine people were killed instantly by the blast, according to police, while a medic in nearby Kindi hospital said two others died there shortly afterward from their injuries.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible, but the blast came on the fringes of Sadr City, al-Sadr's stronghold. Al-Sadr last week declared a six-month "freeze" on his Mahdi Army militia's operations but warned he could reactivate it at any time if he thought necessary.

The announcement came after clashes in the Shiite city of Karbala between Mahdi Army forces and a rival Shiite militia.

In other developments:

• President Bush vigorously defended his troop buildup in Iraq on Wednesday, and got a boost when Australian Prime Minister John Howard said his country's forces there won't change for the foreseeable future.

• In a pre-dawn raid in Karbala on Wednesday, U.S. forces captured an Iraqi believed to be working as the local contact to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps's elite Quds Force to supply Shiite militias with Iranian-made weapons, said U.S. Army Maj. Winfield Danielson III. The suspect is also believed to have helped transport Iraqis to Iran for "terrorist training," Danielson said in an e-mail. The military said it is believed that he is "closely linked to individuals at the highest levels" of the Quds Force.

• Officials in Sulaimaniyah announced that they had indefinitely postponed the start of the school year for primary and secondary schools in an effort to prevent the further spread of cholera in the northern province. Since the disease broke out in mid-August nine people have died and some 70 others have been confirmed with cholera. Another 4,000 are suffering from symptoms like severe diarrhea and vomiting. Cholera is a gastrointestinal disease that is typically spread by drinking contaminated water and can cause severe diarrhea.

• Baghdad has not met 11 of its 18 political and security goals, according to a new independent report on Iraq that challenges President Bush's assessment of the war.

Following al-Maliki's meeting in Najaf, 45 miles southeast of Karbala, with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the premier told reporters there were "issues which I always find necessary to hear his views on."

In addition to filling the Cabinet posts, al-Maliki said he also discussed the possibility of forming a new government altogether or putting together one made up of nonpartisan technocrats - though emphasized it was currently only an "idea" that was being considered among others.

He did not give a time frame for making a decision. But al-Maliki made it clear his government cannot go on indefinitely with an incomplete team of ministers, as has been the case since six Sadrist ministers quit in April over his failure to announce a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops in Iraq. The Sunni Arab ministers withdrew in August.

"We are still trying to persuade the (Sunni Arab) brothers to return to their ministries but it seems that they are not likely to do so," he told reporters. "This, naturally, means the ministries cannot be left vacant."

Al-Sistani, who rarely leaves his Najaf home, did not speak to the reporters gathered outside his home on a small alley near the shrine of Imam Ali, Shiite's most revered saint and a cousin of Prophet Muhammad.

Al-Maliki also said he was considering declaring Iraq's shrine cities "safe havens" where only the army would be allowed to carry arms. He said the proposal was inspired by the fighting last week in the holy city of Karbala where the clashes between the two rival Shiite militias left at least 50 people dead.

"It's an idea that will spare us potential problems," he said, adding that the proposal would cover cities that house all religious shrines regardless of sect.

(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)