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Suicide car bomber targets Baghdad police station, killing at least 22; military reports Marine...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A suicide attacker slammed a truck loaded with explosives into sand barriers outside a Baghdad police station Sunday, killing at least 22 people and wounding 30, police said. The U.S. put the death toll at 40.

At least 22 people, most of them civilians, were killed, police Col. Ala'a Salih said. The U.S. military, citing initial Iraqi police reports, said 40 people were killed, but police said they were uncertain where the figure came from.

More than two dozen cars, including police vehicles, were seen burning and several nearby shops were damaged, police officials said. The blast left a giant, blackened crater at the scene, and the charred remains of the truck used by the bomber were still smoking.

Body parts lay scattered around the area as firefighters worked to extinguish the blaze and rescue workers carried away victims on stretchers. Iraqi soldiers fired into the air to disperse crowds.

It was the deadliest attack in Iraq since a suicide bomber blew himself up near a Shiite mosque July 16 in the central city of Musayyib, igniting a fuel tanker and killing nearly 100 people.

Insurgents have regularly targeted Iraq's police and security forces in attempts to further destabilize the country, which has been struggling to put together a new constitution and broad-based government.

The U.S. military said a Marine was killed Saturday in a bombing near Rutbah in western Iraq. As of Saturday, at least 1,775 members of the U.S. military had died since the Iraq war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Members of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's bloc threatened Sunday to walk out of the constitutional drafting committee in support of a Sunni group that boycotted the process.

Committee member Adnan al-Janabi, who also is part of secular leader Allawi's eight-member bloc, criticized the way the commission dealt with Sunni members' decision to suspend their participation in drafting the new charter.

"Their demands and suspension of membership should have been studied and taken in a way that reassures them and brings them to participate in the draft constitution that we want to be agreed upon by all Iraqis," he said.

Al-Janabi, who also is a spokesman for Allawi's group, said the bloc's continued participation remains in question.

"Our continuation in the committee drafting the constitution has become dependent on getting clarifications to what we have asked earlier," al-Janabi said.

The mixed makeup of the committee was deemed crucial for drafting a constitution acceptable to all of Iraq's ethnic and religious communities, a key to any political exit from the unremitting violence and the need for American troops to remain in Iraq.

If Allawi's secular group joins the Sunnis in pulling out of the process, it raises the concern that a committee already dominated by Shiite religious parties and ethnic Kurds would be left in control of drafting the charter.

Al-Janabi also expressed anger over commission chairman Sheik Humam Hammoudi's announcement that a draft would be ready within days, saying it was "a draft that we were not consulted about and I don't know how it was written or who wrote it."

On Thursday, the 12 remaining Sunni members of the commission suspended their participation to protest the assassination of Sunni member Mijbil Issa and adviser Dhamim Hussein al-Obeidi by unknown gunmen. Two of the original 15 Sunni members resigned earlier after insurgents threatened them.

The Sunni members demanded an international investigation into the killings, better security and a greater Sunni role in deliberations.

On Sunday, no Sunni members showed up at a planned constitutional meeting even though the group indicated a day earlier it was considering a possible return.

Shiite member Bahaa al-Araji said no decision will be taken "without the presence of the brothers (Sunnis) unless there is a reason for the absence. Therefore, the committee will be committed to handing over the draft at the time agreed upon."

The threatened walkout by Allawi's group is the latest hurdle in the commission's goal of getting a constitution drafted and approved by the assembly Aug. 15. That charter then would be scheduled for a public referendum two months later.

Voters in only three of Iraq's 18 provinces can scuttle the constitution if they reject it by two-thirds majority in the October referendum.

Meanwhile, scattered attacks around the capital Sunday left three dead, including two police officers, while a police lieutenant colonel was killed in northern Iraq, police and hospital officials said.

Also, a Baghdad city employee was seriously wounded in a drive-by shooting as he headed to work Sunday and a former member of a local city council was gunned down Saturday night in front of his home in a town north of the capital, officials said.

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