BAGHDAD -- Iraqi lawmakers rejected Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's nominees Tuesday to lead the defense and interior ministries, leaving the crucial Cabinet posts unfilled as an emerging U.S.-led coalition intensifies its air campaign against Islamic extremists who have seized a third of the country.
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Al-Abadi, Iraq's new prime minister, put forward Sunni lawmaker Jaber al-Jabberi as his candidate for defense minister and Shiite lawmaker Riyad Ghareeb as his pick for interior minister. The parliament, which could confirm the nominees with a simple majority, voted 118-117 against Ghareeb and 131-108 against al-Jabberi.
"The failure of the parliament to agree on the candidates to fill the posts of interior and defense ministers shows clearly that the gap among and inside political groups are still huge and that each bloc is pursuing its own ambitions," said lawmaker Mutashar al-Samarie.
"I think that the posts of defense and interior minister should be kept away from sectarian power sharing. Iraq's problems in Iraq can be solved only by bringing independent and efficient people to fill ministerial posts."
Former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki held both the defense and interior minister posts himself after his re-election in 2010 because lawmakers could not reach an agreement on them. That fueled concerns that he was monopolizing power.
Shiite lawmaker Mohammed Saadoun expressed hope that new nominees will be presented at the next parliamentary session on Thursday.
Mohsen Laftah Asfour, a lawmaker with Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's bloc, was the only lawmaker approved in Tuesday's session and will become Water Resources Minister.
Lawmakers approved most of al-Abadi's Cabinet on Sept. 8 and officially voted him in as prime minister, bringing a formal end to al-Maliki's eight-year rule, but al-Abadi requested a delay in naming defense and interior ministers because lawmakers had not agreed on the proposed candidates.
The U.S. and other countries have been pushing for a more representative government that can reach out to Sunnis, who felt marginalized by al-Maliki. Sunni discontent is widely seen as having fueled the Islamic State's advance in the country since June.
U.S. State Department spokesman Marie Harf said the delay in filling the security posts was "part of the normal democratic process."
"We do appreciate the effort that Iraq's leaders have put forth thus far in forming an inclusive government... and they now of course must act without delay and make the necessary decisions to complete the Cabinet," she said.
The parliament session was held as the U.S. carried out an airstrike near Baghdad for the first time since launching an aerial campaign in early August, and French warplanes flying from the United Arab Emirates began reconnaissance missions over Iraq.
Iraqi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Saad Maan Ibrahim said that the U.S. strike in support of Iraqi forces southwest of Baghdad was conducted in coordination with the Iraqi military.
"This operation is the beginning of other operations that aim to eliminate [the Islamic State] in the areas around Baghdad," he said.
Violence in Syria
The U.S. has been trying to pull together an international coalition to help Iraq beat back the militants. However, it has ruled out cooperating with neighboring Iran or Syrian President Bashar Assad's government, both of which also view the Islamic State group as a threat.
But Iraqi National Security Adviser Faleh al-Fayadh met with Assad on Tuesday. According to the Syrian state-run news agency SANA, the two agreed to strengthen cooperation in fighting "terrorism."
"Fighting terrorism begins by exerting pressure on countries that support and finance the terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq and currently claim to be fighting terrorism," Assad said, in a veiled reference to Gulf states, which have provided aid to the rebels fighting to topple him.
Meanwhile, the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards reaffirmed support for Syria's government in response to U.S. efforts to step up aid for the moderate rebel groups that have fought both the Islamic State and Assad's regime.
Iran's "support of the Syrian regime will continue" and "we strongly condemn this move by the U.S. which we see as an aggressive and bullying posture," Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari said.
As countries lined up on both sides of the Syrian conflict, United Nations investigators presented details of more atrocities committed by the Islamic State and by the government in Syria, warning that there could be no battlefield solution to the "madness" in the civil war there.
"I have run out of words to depict the gravity of the crimes committed inside Syria," Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, chairman of the four-person U.N. panel told the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
In addition to the publicized killings of two American journalists and a British aid worker, the Islamic State "has continued to subject scores of Syrians to the same fate in public squares in the north and east of the country," Pinheiro said.
The jihadist group massacred civilians at the Shaar gas fields in Homs province, killed hundreds of captured soldiers in Raqqa in the northeast in July and August and reportedly killed hundreds of members of the Sheitat tribe in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour, Pinheiro said.
Women have been banned from public life and stoned to death after being accused of adultery, or lashed for being seen in public without a male relative or with their heads uncovered, he said.
Despite the extremes of violence committed by militants, Pinheiro said, the Syrian government "remains responsible for the majority of the civilian casualties, killing and maiming scores of civilians daily," describing killing "from a distance" by shelling and aerial bombardment and "up close at checkpoints and in its interrogation rooms."
Syrian plane crash
In Syria on Tuesday, a military plane crashed into the virtual capital of the Islamic State, killing at least eight people, as thousands of residents fled to nearby villages in anticipation of expected U.S. airstrikes against the militants, activists said.
There were conflicting reports about what caused the aircraft to slam into the northeastern city of Raqqa. The Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights said the plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire, while an activist based in the city said it may have experienced a technical failure.
A militant website published pictures of wreckage with claims that the Syrian warplane had been shot down by the Islamic State.
In Damascus, Syrian rebels emerged from underground sewers to attack government troops at dawn, one of very few such infiltration attempts to pass the boundaries of the capital since the war began, activists said.
At least 18 fighters were killed in the southern area of Midan after two groups of rebels crawled into the city through the tunnel network to attack a Syrian government checkpoint, said Rami Abdurrahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The fighters belonged to several rebel brigades, including Syria's al-Qaida affiliate, the Nusra Front. The fighting lasted for four hours, said an activist based east of Damascus who uses the name Mamoun Ayoubi.
More than 190,000 people have been killed since the start in 2011 of Syria's conflict, which has transformed into a multilayered civil war.
The Islamic State group now controls a proto-state that stretches from northern Syria across much of northern and western Iraq. Raqqa, an ancient city on the Euphrates River with a prewar population of 500,000, serves as the extremists' stronghold in Syria.
Also Tuesday, an explosive-rigged vehicle blew up near a northern border crossing with Turkey, killing three people, according to a local activist, Abu al-Hassan, and the Observatory.
Meanwhile, a Turkish opposition legislator said Tuesday that at least 53 Turkish families had crossed into Syria to join the Islamic State group in the past week and accused Turkey's government of doing little to stem the flow.
Turkey's new prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has strongly rejected Western media reports that said many Turks were swelling the ranks of the jihadi group.
But Atilla Kart, a member of main opposition Republican People's Party, said Tuesday that at least 16 people from his constituency of Konya, in central Turkey, had traveled to a recruiting center at Turkey's border with Syria where they met up with other families. All 53 families were then smuggled across the border in small groups, Kart said.
He said the information was based on some family members of the 16 and on security officials who confirmed that the group had traveled to the border. Interior Ministry officials didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Davutoglu has said Turkey's border with Syria remains open to accommodate hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing the fighting.
Information for this article was contributed by Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Sameer N. Yacoub, Zeina Karam, Matthew Lee, Jamey Keaten, John Heilprin, Diaa Hadid, Suzan Fraser and Lori Hinnant of The Associated Press; by Nick Cumming-Bruce of The New York Times; and by Golnar Motevalli, Ladane Nasseri and Terry Atlas of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 09/17/2014