Iraqis Vote As Violence Erupts
Iraqis voted Saturday on a landmark referendum that would define Iraq's democracy, merging the country's often fractious religious and ethnic groups into a single nation.
As anticipated, violence broke out sporadically once polls opened at 7 a.m.
So far, a roadside bomb has killed three Iraqi soldiers in northeast Iraq and six people were wounded during attacks by insurgents on four of Baghdad's 1,200 polling stations in the constitutional referendum, police said.
Insurgents also attacked a U.S. military patrol in central Ramadi, a city 70 miles west of Baghdad, and fired six mortar rounds at a sports hall being used as a polling center, said police 1st Lt. Mohammed Al-Obaidi. No injuries were immediately reported.
The roadside bomb exploded early Saturday near an Iraqi army and police convoy in an area about 80 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing three policemen and wounding three, an officer said. The convoy was on a patrol unrelated to the referendum, the officer said on condition of anonymity as a security precaution in the volatile area.
The attacks in Baghdad occurred near four different polling stations.
As voting began nationwide, a roadside bomb exploded in the western area of Amiriyah near a school that had just opened its doors, wounding two policemen, said police Lt. Mohammed Kheyon. No voters had shown up yet, he said.
At 8:30 a.m., a small rocket exploded near a voting center in Azamiyah, northern Baghdad, slightly wounding one civilian, said police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud.
In the nearby area of Kazemiyah, a mortar round fell near a polling station at 9 a.m., but it did not explode, said police Maj. Falah al-Mhamadawi.
Later, insurgents opened fire on a polling center in the Amil district in western Baghdad, and police fire back at random, accidentally wounding three civilians who were walking toward the school, said police Capt. Talib Thamir. He said the shooting was being investigated.
In the southern city of Basra, three armed men attacked an empty polling station at 3 a.m. and were caught and arrested, said police Capt. Mushtaq Kadim.
Sunni-led insurgents had vowed to wreck Saturday's referendum at about 6,000 polling stations across Iraq. In the 19 days before the voting, nearly 450 people were killed by insurgents using suicide car bombs, roadside bombs and drive-by shootings.
"With the polls open and insurgent attacks in parts of Baghdad, the measure of success of the referendum will depend in part on Sunni participation in the vote," reports CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst Pamela Falk.
"With confidence in a unified Iraqi state at a low ebb," Falk adds, "there is a lot resting on the referendum to replace insurgency with political participation."
In related developments:
The vote started hours after insurgents sabotaged power lines in the northern part of the country, plunging the Iraqi capital into darkness and cutting off water supplies.
A few people were seen walking Saturday morning down empty streets of Baghdad, heavily guarded by Iraqi soldiers and police, to schools where polling stations were fortified with concrete barriers against attacks by Sunni-led insurgents determined to wreck the vote.
President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari cast ballots in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, where Iraq's parliament and the U.S. Embassy are based.
The charter, hammered out after months of bitter negotiations, is supported by a Shiite-Kurdish majority but has split Sunni Arab ranks after last-minute amendments designed to win support among the disaffected minority.
In Friday sermons across the nation, the message from Shiite pulpits was an unequivocal "yes," but it was not so clear-cut in Sunni Arab mosques, varying from "yes," "no" and "vote your conscience."
The referendum, a key stop in Iraq's passage to democratic rule that the U.S. hopes will pave the way for withdrawing foreign troops, takes place as American and Iraqi forces battle an enduring Sunni-led insurgency in Baghdad and areas to the west and north.
Kurds, a sizable minority that is mainly Sunni, fully support the charter.
Jameel Safar, a 30-year-old Kurd in Baghdad, said the charter will safeguard Iraq's unity, but later added: "The Kurds are entitled to everything. We have a right to our own nation like everyone else."
Although there has been a lull so far this month in major insurgent attacks in Baghdad, the U.S. military has warned of an upsurge in violence to coincide with the vote.
The widespread power outage hit soon after sundown Friday, when Muslims break their daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan, leaving Baghdad's skyline black except for pinpoints of light from private generators. Water also ran out in homes in some parts of the capital and water pressure waned.
The insurgents took out several electrical towers between the northern towns of Kirkuk and Beiji, 180 miles from Baghdad, said Mahmoud al-Saaedi, an Electricity Ministry spokesman. He could not say how they were hit.
Power was returning slowly to the capital. The blackout was not expected to affect the balloting as paper ballots were being used, not machines.
But the sabotage signaled the insurgents were looking to mar the referendum even amid a heavy country-wide clampdown by U.S. and Iraqi forces. However, there were no reports of suicide bombings or any major attacks, suggesting insurgents had been hampered by the security measures.