Iraqis race to form unity govt amid violence

President Jalal Talabani was preparing to host another round of talks with the country's Sunni, Shia and Kurdish parties at his residence Sunday afternoon inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone enclave.

Iraq's politicians are under heavy pressure to form a coalition government with the country witnessing a major spike in sectarian violence since a Shia shrine north of Baghdad was dynamited on February 22.

As the talks dragged on, a 13-year-old schoolboy was killed walking to school Sunday when a bomb exploded on his path in the southern town of Basra, police said.

Basra, which is under control of British forces, is predominantly Shia and generally sees less violence than Baghdad and the north of the country.

But crime is rampant and local Shia militias, suspected of links to Iran, seem to move with impunity in Iraq's second largest city.

In other unrest, two security guards at a government installation in Balad, 70km north of Baghdad, were shot dead by gunmen.

In the capital itself, gunmen targeted lawyer Mohammed Adib Mohammed as he was leaving his home, but only succeeded in wounding him.

Two policeman in Baghdad were also wounded when a bomb went off next to their patrol near the city centre.

A cleric, from the influential Sunni group, the Muslim Scholars Association, was arrested Saturday night near Samarra, north of Baghdad, by US and Iraqi forces, his son Abdel Rahman told AFP.

But the US military had no confirmation of his arrest.

Thirteen people were killed in violence Saturday, while 10 more corpses were also discovered in Baghdad, bringing the number of bodies, most showing signs of torture, discovered by police over the last week to about 75.

The dumping of bodies around the capital in the last month have fuelled the impression that Shia and Sunni armed groups are carrying out tit-for-tat killings against each other, pushing Iraq to the brink of civil war.