Strong Turnout For Iraq Vote

Not Much Violence; Results Promised Within Two Weeks

(CBS/AP) 
"The first thing we want from the new government is security," said Hussein Ali Abbas, a 66-year-old Shiite as he voted at Baghdad's city hall. "We are surviving but it is a struggle."

It could take at least two weeks before final results are announced, officials said.

Violence was light. Insurgent groups, as promised, generally refrained from attacks on polling stations. In the Sunni Arab militant stronghold of Ramadi, masked gunmen provided by local sheiks guarded polling stations, frisking voters as they entered.

Iraqi leaders expressed relief that the election had passed relatively smoothly.

"The time has come to build Iraq with our own hands and to use the great wealth that God has granted to Iraq to rebuild Iraq so that we can turn our poverty into wealth and our misery into happiness," Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said.

The turnout in Anbar province, where the insurgency has been so deadly, was steady all day long, reports CBS News correspondent Cami McCormick. One polling station ran out of ballots at midday. Voters often walked more than a mile in some cases to get to polling places, because civilian cars had been banned from the roads. Some carried Iraqi flags. Some sang and chanted.

In Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, streets were transformed into a playground, with children playing games and turning roads into soccer fields.

Turnout was most striking in Sunni Arab areas, including the Baghdad district of Azamiyah. Last January, few voters turned out in Azamiyah, where Saddam took refuge when Baghdad fell.

Tareg Moustafa Abdullah, 70, said he regretted boycotting the January election, which allowed Shiites and Kurds to win control. "We ended up with people who do not know God," he said.

In Fallujah, the former Sunni insurgent bastion seized by U.S. forces in November 2004, 11 of the city's 35 polling stations did not receive ballot boxes, while some sites ran out of ballots in the morning, said Mayor Dhari al-Arsan.

He said some voters "thought it was done purposely," but he attributed the lack of ballot boxes to the large turnout. "Today we are witnessing the biggest democratic process," al-Arsan said.

Election commission spokesman Farid Ayar said officials opened only 167 of the planned 207 election centers in Anbar province because of security. Anbar includes Ramadi and Fallujah.

Turnout was also reported high across the Shiite south, including Basra, where the director of one polling center, Amjad Mahdi, estimated more than 70 percent of the 5,000 registered voters at his facility had cast ballots.