BAGHDAD, Feb 19: Gunmen ambushed a convoy of trucks carrying construction material to US military north of Baghdad on Sunday, killing four Iraqi drivers.

Meanwhile, search crews found the wreckage of a German plane in northern Iraq with the six people on board dead.

A police general also died in a roadside bombing in northern Iraq as violence continued a day after 20 people, including a US soldier, were killed in a spate of bombings and shootings.

A prominent Kurdish politician said talks between Kurdish and Shia leaders on forming a new government are “not going well” because of major policy differences. That could delay formation of a new government and any drawdown of US forces.

The plane was en route to Iraq from Azerbaijan carrying five Germans and an Iraqi — employees of a Bavarian construction company — when it went missing during stormy weather Thursday night over the rugged area near the border between Iran and Iraq.

Shahou Mohammed, the regional administrator in Sulaimaniyah, said the wreckage was found near Boushin, northeast of Sulaimaniyah, 260 kilometres northeast of Baghdad, after villagers reported the crash.

He said searchers, who were in radio contact with him, found six bodies on board.

In Baghdad, US Embassy official Peter McHugh said an American adviser who accompanied the Iraqi search team reported from the scene that the aircraft wreckage was scattered over a fairly large area and “there appear to be no survivors”.

He said the site was at an elevation of about 1,300 metres and recovery efforts would continue on Monday.

“Everything I’ve seen suggests this is an aviation accident,” he said, and not the result of any “hostile intervention”.

The ambush occurred near Nibaie, about 55 km north of the capital, police Lt Khalid al Obaidi said. The area has been the scene of several ambushes and roadside bombings in the last few days.

In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded Sunday afternoon near a Shia political office, killing two people, including a policeman, and wounding five, three of them police, officials said.—AP