BAGHDAD, August 17, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Three car bombs killed at least 43 people in a coordinated attack on a Baghdad bus station in the morning rush hour Wednesday, August 17, ending a lull in suicide bombings as Iraqi leaders resumed talks to finish drafting the constitution before the extended deadline ends.

"The casualty figure could rise as there are charred bodies all over the place," an official in the Interior Ministry told Reuters, adding the deadly bombings have injured more than 76 people.

The first two bombs, shortly before 8 a.m. (0400 GMT), sent a huge plume of black smoke into the clear sky over the city.

One went off close to an entrance to the Nahda bus station, where coaches, minibuses and taxis ferry travelers to and from towns across Iraq. A second went off inside a few minutes later.

A quarter of an hour or so after that, as police and medics were moving casualties to Kindi hospital nearby, the third bomb detonated, killing some of those who had come to help.

Unlike many bombings, police said it was not clear if any of the cars was driven by a suicide attacker.

The US military said in a statement one bomb -- it was not clear which in the sequence -- was detonated by its driver, while a second was concealed in a parked vehicle.

Earlier in the day, six Iraqi soldiers were killed when gunmen fired automatic weapons at their car near the town of Hawija in northern Iraq, police said.

A July 20 survey by the British NGO Iraq Body Count found that the US-led occupation forces in Iraq have caused 37 percent of civilian deaths – some 25,000 in just two years.

The survey further found that criminals and gangs came close second at 36 percent, while resistance fighters accounted for 9.5 percent.

An Iraqi boy cries after he learns his father, a bus driver, was killed in the bombings.

It was the first attack on this scale in Baghdad for nearly a month and came hours before political leaders were to resume efforts to resolve deadlock on a new constitution, following their failure to produce a draft by Monday's midnight deadline.

Parliament gave leaders of rival sectarian and ethnic groups a further week to settle their differences.

Bahaa Al-Araji, a leading Shiite lawmaker and a member of the constitution drafting committee, said talks were getting under way again within the panel in late morning.

Only brief informal contacts took place Tuesday, August 16, he added.

Saleh Al-Mutlak, a Sunni negotiator, said his group was still opposing provisions that might give Shiites control over the southern oilfields and allow Kurds to expand their region's boundaries to annex the oil resources of the north.

Senior party leaders would gather later in the day, he said.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in remarks more critical than those of President George W. Bush and his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, called the delay in drafting a new constitution "not helpful".

"The sooner it is done, the fewer Iraqis that will be killed, the fewer Americans or coalition forces that will be killed," he said.

Some panelists warned Tuesday of a looming political crisis if they failed once again to reach a compromise.

US experts on Iraq have further warned that too much US pressure on Iraqi leaders could backfire and undermine the leadership's credibility.