Nine killed in Iraq violence

At least nine people were killed across strife-torn Iraq as Kurdish leaders on Sunday lobbied reclusive Shia cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to stop outgoing Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari from heading the next government.
"We reject Jaafari because we believe that Iraq needs a government of national unity and new faces," said Barhem Saleh, planning minister and a close aide to President Jalal Talabani.
Talabani, who predicted on Saturday that the parliament elected in December should finally be able to meet in a week after two-and-a-half months of deadlock, dispatched Saleh to meet Sistani to explain Kurds' and Sunnis' opposition to Jaafari.
Saleh also met radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr, one of the Jaafari's main backers in the ruling religious-based United Iraqi Alliance.
"Sadr insisted on national unity and on consolidating the bonds between the Iraqis," said Saleh, adding, however, that Sadr vowed to continue supporting Jaafari.
In violence over the last 24 hours, at least nine people were killed, including five people, who were gunned down in separate attacks on an Imambargah and a mosque.
Three men guarding a mosque in Baghdad were shot dead overnight when gunmen dressed in police uniforms attacked the building, an Interior Ministry official said.
Two people were killed on Saturday night when gunmen fired on an Imambargah frequented by Turkmen in the northern city of Kirkuk.
Separately, gunmen killed a nephew and a cousin of Sheikh Hareth al-Dari, who heads Iraq's main Sunni religious group the Committee of Muslim Scholars, a source close to the family said.
Two Iraqi soldiers were also killed by gunmen who fired on their vehicle in Tikrit on Sunday, while police said the bodies of three men were discovered in Nabai, 60km north-east of the capital.
Iraqi state television said that army forces had foiled an insurgent attack on a major shrine in northern Baghdad.
Meanwhile, the US military dismissed reports that foreign troops would leave Iraq by early 2007.
Two British newspapers, The Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Mirror, quoted unnamed senior British Army sources as saying the coalition intended to reduce its presence on the ground over the next 12 months, while withdrawing forces into bases.