BAGHDAD, Iraq – An American general yesterday blamed Iraq’s recent spike in bloodshed on a terrorist leader condoning the killing of fellow Muslims, while a suicide car bomber rammed into a truck in Baghdad, killing at least eight police officers and wounding 25 others.

The American military also reported that five Marines and a sailor were killed Wednesday near the volatile western city of Ramadi.

Separately, Staff Sergeant Alberto Martinez was charged with murder Wednesday in the deaths last week of two Army officers at a base north of Baghdad, the military said yesterday.

The military initially attributed the June 7 killings of the officers – Captain Phillip Esposito, 30, of Suffern, N.Y., and 1st Lieutenant Louis Allen, 34, of Milford, Pa. – to an insurgent mortar attack near Tikrit but said further investigation showed the blast pattern was inconsistent with such an attack.

The Jordanian-born terrorist leader Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi’s hope to provoke sectarian war suffered a setback yesterday when the Shiite-led Parliament and leaders of the disaffected Sunni Arab minority, which is thought to provide the backbone of the insurgency, agreed on a process for drafting Iraq’s constitution.

Elsewhere, dozens of hooded insurgents surrounded a downtown mosque in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, to prevent a meeting of local politicians and tribal leaders on the country’s new charter and reconciliation efforts.

“We told them to leave Iraq’s issues for us, we are the only ones who can liberate Iraq by fighting infidels and not by holding conferences. And instead of spending money for this conference, they have to give it to us to buy weapons to help our fighting against the Americans,” a masked man told Iraqi reporters outside the empty mosque.

U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Don Alston took aim at Mr. Zarqawi, saying the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq is most responsible for the nearly 1,100 violent deaths since the Shiite led government took office seven weeks ago.

“With Zarqawi’s push recently, we certainly see the fantastic rise in the number of civilians killed, given that he has proclaimed that taking out civilians is an acceptable thing,” Brigadier General Alston, who is a spokesman for the American-led international military force in Iraq, said.

Last month, an audiotape said to be from Mr. Zarqawi denounced the country’s majority Shiites as collaborators with the Americans and said it was justified for Muslims to kill such people even if they are Muslims.

Brigadier General Alston’s focus on Mr. Zarqawi, whose small group is blamed for many of the bloodiest attacks and hostage takings in Iraq, apparently was aimed at reinforcing growing dissatisfaction among Iraqis over insurgents targeting civilians. He said that anger has brought an increase in calls to tip lines.

He said tips to Iraqi authorities resulted in Tuesday’s arrest of Mohammed Khalaf, also known as Abu Talha, who was Al Qaeda’s leader in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.

As he spoke, Shiite politicians succeeded at including Sunni Arabs in the work of drafting Iraq’s new constitution. Senior members of the Shiite dominated parliament committee writing the charter reached agreement with Sunni groups on their representation on the panel, a political breakthrough just two months before a deadline to prepare the charter.

The stalemate over that issue had threatened Iraq’s political process as it was about to enter its final stretch, with two key nationwide votes planned for later this year – a constitutional referendum in October and a general election in December.

The constitutional process, and attempts to open channels with some militant groups not tied to extremists, are touted by America and Iraq’s government as a way to help defuse the insurgency.

Sergeant Martinez, a 37-year-old supply specialist with the Headquarters and Headquarters Company of the 42nd Infantry Division, a New York based National Guard unit, is facing two counts of premeditated murder, according to a statement from Multi-National Corps, Iraq. He was being held at a military jail in Kuwait and has been assigned a military attorney and has the option of hiring a civilian lawyer, the statement said.

In yesterday’s attack, the suicide bomber plowed his black sedan at high speed into a truck carrying police officers from checkpoint to checkpoint on the road connecting Baghdad with its airport. The officers were part of an evening replacement shift, according to police Major Moussa Abdul Karim and a medic at the al-Yarmouk hospital, Najam Abid.