BAGHDAD, April 24: Two bombs exploded near a Shia mosque in Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 23 people coming out of the mosque, a police official said. The official said 81 people were also wounded at the Ahl al-Beit mosque. A witness said he saw many ambulances rushing to the scene, a crowded market area.

The police official said a roadside bomb exploded and then a suicide bomber in a car blew himself up beside a crowd that had gathered to inspect damage from the first blast.

The bombs exploded at a time when Iraq’s new majority Shia leaders and Kurds have gained power after Jan. 30 elections and once-dominant Sunnis, who are leading an insurgency, have been sidelined.

Iraqi and US officials have accused Al Qaeda’s wing in Iraq, headed by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, of bombing Shia targets in a bid to spark a civil war.

Al Qaeda’s Iraqi wing threatened on Sunday to kill fellow Sunnis who join the country’s new government, saying they would be considered infidels.

“We warn all those who want to join the politics of infidels and apostates that the steel sword will be their only fate,” the group, led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said in a statement posted on a Website used by Islamic militants.

Talks to form a new government have been going on for nearly three months. Political sources say discussions are focusing on drawing minority Sunni Arabs, the dominant sect under ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, into the government with majority Shias and Kurds.

“Those so-called Sunnis are racing into the open arms of the Jews and Christians ... for the love of positions and earthly interests,” al Qaeda Organisation for Holy War in Iraq said in the statement.

Zarqawi’s group is one of the main networks of insurgents in Iraqi fighting the government and US forces. It claimed responsibility for last year’s assassination of the head of the now-defunct Iraqi Governing Council and senior police officials.

GOVT FORMATION: Iraqi leaders will announce a government within days and no one from caretaker Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s party will be in the cabinet.—Reuters/AFP