Insurgents Unleash Wave Of Terror
Rebels unleashed a wave of attacks Thursday, killing more than 30 people, including two U.S. Marines and a dozen Iraqi army recruits, as Iraqi officials released the first figures from weekend national elections, which showed a commanding lead by candidates backed by the Shiite Muslim clergy.
Insurgents had eased up on attacks following the elections, when American and Iraqi forces imposed sweeping security measures. But starting Wednesday night, guerrillas launched a string of dramatic attacks.
In the deadliest incident, insurgents stopped a minibus south of Kirkuk, ordered army recruits off the vehicle and gunned down 12 of them, said Maj. Gen. Anwar Mohammed Amin. Two soldiers were allowed to go free, ordered by the rebels to warn others against joining Iraq's U.S.-backed security forces, he said.
Both Marines were killed in action Wednesday night in Anbar, a Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad.
Elsewhere, rebels attacked Iraqi police Thursday in the Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib, killing one policeman and wounding five, the Interior Ministry said.
Gunmen fired on a vehicle carrying Iraqi contractors Thursday to jobs at a U.S. military base in Baqouba north of the capital, killing two people, officials said. Insurgents fired mortars at a U.S. base in Tal Afar, near Mosul, killing two civilians Wednesday night.
A suicide car bomber struck a foreign convoy escorted by military Humvees on Baghdad's dangerous airport road Thursday, destroying several vehicles and damaging a house, Iraqi police said. Helicopters were seen evacuating some casualties, witnesses said. There was no immediate comment from the U.S. military.
In other developments:
Partial returns released by the election commission four days after the balloting showed the United Iraqi Alliance, backed by Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, leading with 1.1 million votes.
The ticket headed by interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a U.S.-backed secular Shiite, trailed second with more than 360,500 votes.
Only 1.6 million votes have been counted and certified from 10 percent of the country's 5,200 polling centers, the commission said, and the numbers were too small to indicate a nationwide trend. The partial returns came from Baghdad and southern five provinces with heavily Shiite populations.
Shiites make up an estimated 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people and the al-Sistani-backed ticket had been expected to roll up such huge margins in the Shiite heartland that the other 110 candidate lists would have to struggle for votes in the rest of the country.
Although Shiites turned out in huge numbers in cities such as Basra, Nasiriyah, Karbala and Najaf, many Sunni Arabs apparently stayed home, either out of fear of insurgent attacks or in response to boycott calls.
Shiite clerics told their followers that voting was a religious duty, while Sunni preachers urged a boycott of any balloting as long as American and other foreign troops remained in the country.
Election officials have said it could take up to seven to 10 days from the Sunday vote to produce full official results and determine turnout. Seats in the National Assembly will be determined based on the percentage won by the various tickets.
Election officials said strict security measures credited with preventing major rebel attacks may have inadvertently deprived many Iraqis in the Mosul area and surrounding Ninevah province of their right to vote.
Many people in the Mosul area complained that polling stations had run out of ballots or never opened due to insurgent threats.
On Thursday, the electoral commission said it had sent a team to Mosul to investigate the complaints. It was unclear how many voters were affected.
Election official Safwat Rashid said that authorities decided on election day that they could open more polling stations than expected because security was better than forecast.
"We tried to send the boxes and ballot papers to those places," Rashid said. "In some places we succeeded and unfortunately in some other places due to transportation and other things we failed.
"We had 330 polling centers in Ninevah but Iraqi and foreign troops told us that 'you can only open 90 polling centers."'
Lack of Sunni participation has raised concern about further alienation within the community which forms the bedrock of the anti-American rebellion. Before the election, U.S. and Iraqi authorities hoped vast numbers of Sunni Arabs — estimated at 20 percent of the population — would defy rebel threats and take part in the election.
One prominent Sunni politician, Meshaan al-Jubouri, accused the commission of mismanaging the vote in some Sunni areas because they "didn't want the Sunnis to vote so that the Shiites could score a fake victory."
Insurgents ambushed another convoy in the area, killing five Iraqi policemen and an Iraqi National Guard major, police said. An Iraqi soldier was killed by gunmen as he was leaving his Baghdad home, officials said.
During the election, Iraqis chose a 275-seat National Assembly, provincial councils and a regional parliament for the autonomous Kurdish north. According to the count, the Shiite Alliance was running first and Allawi's list second in all six provinces reporting.
In Baghdad province, the Alliance was leading 3-1 over Allawi, but it was unclear whether the returns were from heavily Shiite districts. The other provinces were Dhi Qar, Muthanna, Qadisiyah, Najaf and Karbala.