AS THE scowling face of Saddam Hussein appeared on the television screen yesterday at the start of yet another session of his trial, the cry went up to change channels in the packed coffee shop in central Baghdad.

Salah Mehdi, 36, cursed and turned his back on the former president. “Nobody cares about him any more,” he said. “We have more urgent worries now.” Customers in the Haider Double, a popular falafel restaurant, switched over to an Arabic satellite station that was keeping a running score of victims from the latest mayhem.

Mr Mehdi, a local barber in Karadat Maryam, and his two friends also wanted to keep an eye on the latest instalment of the most absorbing Iraqi soap opera: the bungling attempts by the country’s powerbrokers to agree on a prime minister.

While they continue to bicker, corpses are piling up on the streets of Baghdad. One of Mr Mehdi’s cousins was killed a fortnight ago in a car bombing, a forgotten footnote to all but his family in a city that is being torn apart by communal hatred.

Not far from this café the rival political factions were safe behind the barricades of the international green zone, carving up the top jobs in Iraq’s first democratic government. Among the most strident voices in this haggling was Saleh al-Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni Arab politician. He was called out of a meeting to be told that the body of his brother had been found yesterday, dumped on waste ground in Shula, north of the city centre. Talah al-Mutlaq had been shot in the head at point-blank range, presumably by one of the death squads that roam with seeming impunity.

He was also a member of the Iraqi Front for National Dialogue, which his brother leads, and had been abducted three weeks ago as he drove out of the capital. This marked the second time in a week that the brother of an important Sunni politician had been murdered. Security officials suspected that this was a deliberate new tactic by militiamen hoping to influence the outcome of the political wrangling.

To show how far apart the sides remained after three months of negotiation, Khalef al-Elian, another leading Sunni voice, revealed that, by last night, only one senior post of nine had been agreed.

Ibrahim Jaafari, the increasingly unpopular Prime Minister, has shown no signs of standing down, despite reported secret deals brokered by influential religious clerics. The grim consequence of this impasse was seen again on the streets yesterday, as a dozen mutilated bodies were discovered across the city. All had been tortured. Seven bullet- riddled corpses were dumped in a van in the mostly Sunni district of Dora. Three men, blindfolded and handcuffed, were found in Shula, a Shia area, the Interior Ministry said.

There was a ferocious day-long gunbattle between Iraqi troops and insurgents in the northern district of Azamiyah, where at least three civilians were killed.

There was the usual string of bombings and drive-by shootings in Baghdad and in Baqouba, killing two people and wounding more than fifteen. The body of a Basra policeman kidnapped three days ago was found near the Iran border.

Those who switched off the live coverage of Saddam’s trial did not miss much. The session lasted barely an hour before his lawyers demanded an independent expert to judge whether the signatures on death warrants for 148 civilians were Saddam’s. His defence team said that it would accept adjudicators from any country, bar Iran. Saddam stirred, leant forward in his chair and interjected, “ and Israel”.

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