On Sunday the Iraqi army reported discovering 50 bodies dumped behind a provincial electrical company near Baqouba, and an army official in Diyala said local forces and U.S. troops were heading to the area to recover the corpses. Gunmen had prevented their immediate retrieval. The army official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to provide details of the operation.

Authorities said 159 people were killed or found dead nationwide Sunday, including 35 who died when two suicide bombers detonated explosives belts among police recruits outside a west Baghdad security forces headquarters.

Al-Maliki blamed Sunni Muslims for the sectarian conflict on Sunday and promised to reshuffle his Cabinet after rebuking lawmakers for disloyalty.

The country's Sunni defense minister challenged al-Maliki's contention that the U.S. military should quickly pull back into bases and let the Iraqi army take control of security countrywide.

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani was at the top of the list to lose his post in the coming Cabinet shake-up, key lawmakers from al-Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party said, because police and security forces were failing to rein in the unbridled sectarian killing verging on civil war in Baghdad and the center of the country.

Al-Bolani, a Shiite who was chosen in June and a month after al-Maliki's government was formed, is an independent. The United States demanded that the defense and interior posts be held by men without ties to the Shiite political parties that control militia forces.

Al-Maliki is under pressure both from his people and the United States to curb violence, with Washington hammering on him to disband Shiite militias believed responsible, through their death squads, for much of the killing.

The interior minister controls police and other security forces which already are infiltrated by the Badr Brigade and the Mahdi Army, the armed wing of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's political movement. Al-Maliki is dependent on both SCIRI and the Sadrists for his hold on power.

Defense Minister Abdul-Qadir al-Obaidi rejected calls by al-Maliki for the U.S. military to speed transfer of security operations throughout the country to the Iraqi army, saying his men still were too poorly equipped and trained to do the job.

"We are working hard to create a real army and we ask our government not to try to move too quickly because of the political pressure it feels," al-Obaidi said.

Al-Maliki wants the Americans confined to bases for him to call on in emergencies, but he boldly predicted his army could crush violence within six months if left alone to do the work.

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, last month said it would take 12 to 18 months before Iraq's army was ready to take control of the country with some U.S. backup.

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