Baghdad ? Iraq’s political leaders emerged Thursday from three days of crisis talks with a new alliance that seeks to save the crumbling U.S.-backed government. But the reshaped power bloc included no Sunnis and immediately raised questions about its legitimacy as a unifying force.

The political gambit came as teams in northern Iraq tallied the grim figures from the deadliest wave of suicide attacks of the war and – in a rare moment of joy since Tuesday’s devastation – pulled four children alive from the rubble.

“We didn’t hear them calling out for help until moments before a bulldozer would have killed them as it cleared the rubble,” said Saad Muhanad, a municipal council member in the Qahtaniya region, where four bomb-laden trucks turned clay and stone homes into tombs for hundreds belonging to a small religious group considered as infidels by hard-line Muslims.

At least 400 dead

Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said Thursday that at least 400 were dead – apparently all members of the ancient Yazidi sect that mixes elements of Islam, Christianity and other faiths. Some authorities outside the central government had said at least 500 people died and have not revised that figure downward.

The four small survivors were related, Muhanad said, but he did not know if they were siblings. No other details about the children were known. The freed youngsters began running through the streets begging for food and water.

The mayor of the region pleaded for help, meanwhile, saying an even larger tragedy loomed if the shattered communities did not get food, water and medicine soon.

Call for help

“People are in shock. Hospitals here are running out of medicine. The pharmacies are empty. We need food, medicine and water, otherwise there will be an even greater catastrophe,” said Abdul-Rahim al-Shimari, mayor of the Baaj district, which includes the Kurdish-speaking Yazidi villages hit by the suicide blasts blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq.

The region is in northwest Iraq, near the Syrian border – suggesting the extremist group could be pushing into new areas in northern Iraq after being driven from strongholds by U.S.-led offensives.

Qassim Khalaf, a 40-year-old government worker, was crying while he spoke by telephone from Qahtaniya.

“We call upon the United Nations to protect the Yazidis because the Iraqi government is in hibernation. Right now, I can see some bodies still partially buried under the rubble. Hundreds of local volunteers are still working in the rescue operations,” he sobbed. “Eighty percent of the village was destroyed or damaged. Just a while ago, we pulled the body for a 7-year-old girl out of the debris.”

Khalaf said five of his cousins were killed.

Barham Saleh, a Kurd and deputy prime minister, toured the area and ordered the Health and Defense ministries to immediately send tents, medicine and other aid.

He also allocated $800,000 to provincial officials to distribute to the victims and relatives.

Shiite-Kurdish coalition

The U.N. Security Council condemned the bombings “in the strongest terms,” saying they were aimed at widening the sectarian and ethnic divide in Iraq. Council members called for an end to sectarian violence.

In Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki hailed the political agreement as a first step toward unblocking the paralysis that has gripped his Shiite-dominated government since it first took power in May 2006.

The new Shiite-Kurdish coalition will retain a majority in parliament – 181 of the 275 seats – and apparently have a clear path to pass legislation demanded by the Bush administration, including a law on sharing Iraq’s oil wealth among Iraqi groups and returning some Saddam Hussein-era officials purged under earlier White House policies.