Baghdad - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's unity government plunged deeper into crisis yesterday when four secularist ministers withdrew from Cabinet meetings, less than a week after the main Sunni Arab bloc quit.
There are now no Sunni members left in Maliki's unity government.
A total of 17ministers, nearly half of Maliki's Cabinet, have now quit or are boycotting meetings at a time when he is under growing pressure from frustrated US officials to make demonstrable progress in reconciling Iraq's warring sects.
In Baghdad, United States diplomats held the first meeting of a new security committee with officials from arch-foe Iran.
Establishing the security sub-committee has been the main achievement so far of new face-to-face contacts between Washington and Tehran - enemies who have had no diplomatic ties for almost 30 years but were driven to the negotiating table this year by the threat of all-out civil war in Iraq.
In violence yesterday, a huge truck bomb killed 33 people in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar. In Baghdad, six people died when street cleaners were hit by a bomb hidden in a rubbish bin. Another bomb on a minibus killed two.
