41 killed as Iraqi parliament session cancelled

Iraq's Shia leaders, divided over their choice for the next prime minister, cancelled a much-awaited parliament session on Sunday as insurgent attacks across the country left at least 41 people dead.
The parliament session had initially been scheduled for Monday with hopes of breaking the impasse to forming a national unity government among Shias, Sunnis and Kurds four months after a landmark election. In the deadliest attack on Sunday, a car bombing near a market in the town of Mahmudiyah, 30 kilometres south of Baghdad left 10 dead and 25 wounded, an interior ministry official said. Gunmen shot dead seven construction workers and wounded three others in the restive northern city of Mosul, police said. Six more Iraqis were killed in various attacks across the country.
The US military announced that four marines had been killed in enemy action in the western Al-Anbar province.
"We decided to postpone for a few days the holding of the parliament," said MP Bassem Sharif, a member of the parliament's most powerful bloc, the Shia United Iraqi Alliance.