BAGHDAD, Iraq - A series of attacks claimed by an al-Qaida-linked group in Iraq left at least 16 people dead and dozens wounded today, as the country took its first major step toward forming a government whose most crucial task will be dealing with the insurgency.

Most of today's fatalities occurred in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, where insurgents launched a series of apparently coordinated attacks that killed seven soldiers and five police, said Tariq Ibrahim, a medic at Baqouba's main hospital. He said at least 26 people were wounded, including one civilian caught in the crossfire.

The assaults included a car bomb, three roadside bombs and small arms attacks on three checkpoints, one of them just south of Baqouba in Muradiyah, said police Col. Mudhafar al-Jubbori.

Guerrillas also fired a mortar near the blue-domed governor's office, causing no casualties, said a spokesman for the U.S. 42nd Infantry Division, Maj. Richard Goldenberg. He said Iraqi police came under small arms fire shortly afterward on a highway south of the city.

An Internet statement purportedly by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for the Baqouba attacks.

In Baghdad, gunmen killed two police and wounded a third in a drive-by shooting in the eastern slum of Sadr City, said Dr. Abdul Jabar Solan, director of a hospital where the casualties were brought.

Two civilians were also killed when a roadside bomb targeting a joint U.S.-Iraqi military convoy exploded in the southeastern New Baghdad suburb. The explosion missed the convoy, damaging two passing cars and wounding four people, including two girls, said 1st Lt. Ali Hussein Hamdani.

In the latest in a wave of abductions, Jordan's Foreign Ministry spokesman said a Jordanian businessman was kidnapped in Iraq by abductors demanding $250,000 in ransom to release him.

More than 190 foreigners have been abducted in Iraq over the past year. At least 13 remain in the hands of their captors and more than 30 were killed. The rest were freed, some through the payment of ransom, or escaped.

Elsewhere, Bulgarian Defense Minister Nikolai Svinarov said in Sophia that a Bulgarian soldier killed last week in Iraq was likely shot by friendly fire from troops of the U.S.-led coalition.

In Baghdad, a U.S. military spokesman, Tech. Sgt. Patrick Murphy, said the commanding general in the region had appointed a special commission to investigate.

Today's violence came a day after politicians set March 16 for the opening of the country's first democratically elected parliament in modern history as a deal hardened Sunday to name Jalal Talabani, a leader of the minority Kurds, to the presidency. The day marks the anniversary of the 1988 Saddam-ordered chemical attack on the northern Kurdish town of Halabja, which killed 5,000 people.

The more powerful prime minister's job will go to Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a deeply conservative Shiite who leads the Islamic Dawa party. His nomination, which the Kurds have agreed to, has been endorsed by the most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq - Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

"This was one of our firm demands and we agreed on it previously. The agreement states that Jalal Talabani takes the presidential post and one of the United Iraqi Alliance members takes the prime minister's post," Talabani spokesman Azad Jundiyan told The Associated Press.

He said the clergy-backed United Iraqi Alliance also reached a preliminary agreement with the Kurds on their other conditions - including extending their territories to include Kirkuk.

Officials have said the post of speaker probably would go to a Sunni Arab - either interim President Ghazi al-Yawer or interim Minister of Industry Hajim al-Hassani.

A Sunni Arab speaker would go far toward appeasing the minority, which is believed to make up the core of the insurgency and, like the Kurds, represents 15 to 20 percent of Iraq's estimated 26 million people. But unlike the Kurds, Sunni Arabs largely stayed away from the election to protest the U.S. presence in the country.