Sectarian violence has mounted to claim perhaps 100 lives a day and tens of thousands flee their homes.

BAGHDAD — There has been serious talk among Iraqi leaders to divide Baghdad into Shiite and Sunni zones in the east and the west to stop sectarian bloodshed and head off a bloody civil war across the country despite appearing in public committed to national unity under the coalition of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, Iraqi officials told Reuters Friday, July 21.

"Iraq as a political project is finished," one senior government official said, speaking only on condition of anonymity.

"The parties have moved to Plan B," he said, saying Sunni, ethnic Kurdish and majority Shiite blocs were looking at ways to divide power and resources and to solve the conundrum of Baghdad's mixed population of seven million.

"There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into east and west," he said. "We are extremely worried."

One highly placed source even spoke of busying himself on government projects, despite a sense of their futility, only as a way to fight his growing depression over his nation's future.

Sectarian violence has mounted to claim perhaps 100 lives a day and tens of thousands flee their homes.

Bombs blasted worshippers at two mosques in Iraq during Friday prayers and the authorities extended a daytime curfew on Baghdad in an apparent effort to prevent violence after one of the bloodiest weeks this year.

Bombs outside Sunni mosques in Khalis, north of the capital, and in the mainly Shi'ite east of Baghdad, each killed one man and wounded two, police said.

There were also new clashes in Mahmudiya, a violent town just south of the city where nearly 60 people were killed in a mass assault by gunmen on Monday.

"Terrifying and Black"

On the eve of the first meeting of a National Reconciliation Commission and before Maliki meets President George W. Bush in Washington next week, other senior politicians also said they were close to giving up on hopes of preserving the 80-year-old, multi-ethnic, religiously mixed state in its present form.

"The situation is terrifying and black," said Rida Jawad Al -Takki, a senior member of parliament from Maliki's dominant Shiite Alliance bloc, and one of the few officials from all the main factions willing to speak publicly on the issue.

"We have received information of a plan to divide Baghdad. The government is incapable of solving the situation," he said.

A senior official from the once dominant Sunni minority concurred: "Everyone knows the situation is very bad," he said. "I'm not optimistic."

Some Western diplomats in Baghdad say there is little sign the new government is capable of halting a slide to civil war.

"Maliki and some others seem to be genuinely trying to make this work," one said. "But it doesn't look like they have real support. The factions are looking out for their own interests."

Pundits told Reuters that broadly speaking Iraq could split in three: a Shiite south, Kurdish north and Sunni Arab west. But there could be fierce fighting between Arabs and Kurds for Mosul and for Kirkuk's oil as well as urban war in Baghdad, resembling Beirut in the 1970s.

Maliki goes next week to Washington, where President George W. Bush hopes for progress in Iraq that may help at November's congressional elections and make it easier to withdraw troops.

But Iraqi politicians and diplomats increasingly question the resolve within the government and parliament to set aside partisan aims to stop a bloody break-up of the oil-rich state.