Aug 13, 2007, 9:43 GMT
Baghdad - A fresh wave of violence hit Iraq on Monday with five policemen killed and Baghdad's Green Zone - home of the government and foreign embassies - coming under mortar fire, according to local news reports.
In Khanaqin town in northern Diyala province, an explosive charge detonated overnight near a police patrol, killing at least five policemen, including a local police chief, and wounding four others, reported the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
The blast, according to Ghaeb Ali Hussein, media spokesman for Khanaqin police department, occurred near the border with Iran.
Meanwhile, the heavily-fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad, where the Iraqi government and the US and British embassies are based, came under mortar fire on Monday morning.
The mortar shells fell near the Qadissiyah housing compound but no casualties were reported, police sources told VOI.
In political developments Iraqi leaders, at the request of Premier Nuri al-Maliki, were set to meet to discuss the political standoff the government is enduring and the demands submitted by individual blocs.
Five ministers and Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie of the Sunni Iraqi Accord Front announced their withdrawal from government earlier this month, leaving al-Maliki's cabinet with mainly Shiites and Kurds.
In April six ministers of the movement lead by the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr resigned in protest of al-Maliki's failure to provide a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops.
According to VOI, al-Maliki is expected to make a number of decisions during the summit 'including naming substitute ministers to replace the Sadrists who quit from the cabinet.'
Regarding naming new Sunni ministers to replace the Iraqi Accord Front ministers, al-Maliki said Sunday he hopes 'that the crisis will end and the Accordance ministers be back to the cabinet but if they refused to do so we will find ourselves obliged to replace them.'
He dismissed speculation that his government could collapse: 'It is a wish by some but it is far the day when people would see the government in its countdown.'
Demands submitted by the blocs will be implemented 'if they complied with the constitution,' al-Maliki added.
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