Nine Iraqi security personnel and a woman civilian killed on Saturday in separate attacks across Iraq. Three Iraqi soldiers were killed in the Fallujah when armed men threw a grenade at a passing army patrol. According to <i>AFP</I>, four more Iraqi soldiers were killed near the northern town of Shorgat, a police source said.
The attacks came a day after Iraq's national security adviser said that the country would descend into civil war if federalism was not entrenched in the constitution. "Without federalism it means that no community interest has been addressed or fulfilled and therefore different communities will try to find and defend and fight for their rights," Mowaffaq al-Rubaie told Reuters in an interview.
"I am worried about that. Yes. Absolutely. With a civil war you can't say 'today we don't have a civil war, tomorrow a civil war erupted'. Civil war creeps into the country very gradually."
As the Monday deadline to finish the constitution looms, Sunnis and some Shiites rallied in Baghdad and elsewhere to protest calls for a federated state - a demand of the Kurds and the biggest Shiite party but a major barrier to an agreement on the constitution.
Talks continued into Saturday morning with U.S. officials intensifying pressure on the Kurds to accept Shiite and Sunni demands for a greater role of Islam in government and to abandon their demand for the right to secede, Kurdish officials said, according to The AP.
Meanwhile, Iraqi resistance groups prepare "a massive attack" next week, representatives of the U.S. and other countries' secret services said. According to ABC TV, a new wave of huge attacks is to be timed to coincide with a possible adoption of a draft of Iraq's new constitution on Monday.
Suicide-bombers plan to carry out up to 20 blasts in the country simultaneously, mainly in Baghdad, ABC reported on Friday.
