Sunni Muslims look at the ballot of the forthcoming elections during their meeting in the city council in Kirkuk, Iraq, some 180 miles north of Baghdad, Jan. 28, 2005.
A U.S. soldier patrols past bodies of dead Iraqi soldiers in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, Jan. 28, 2005. Four soldiers were kidnapped four days earlier and found dead with a message from the insurgents.
Flames engulf a car following a nearby car bomb blast in another vehicle in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, Iraq, Jan 28, 2005. Car bombings rattled Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, as insurgents targeted polling sites across the country with just two days to go before historic elections.
An Iraqi election official finds the name of voters, during their country's elections at a polling station in the Iranian city of Qom, southwest of the Iranian capital Tehran, Jan. 28, 2005.
An Iraqi policeman secures the area following a car bomb blast in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, Jan. 28, 2005.
A British soldier from The Royal Dragoon Guards on a patrol in Az Zubayr, Jan. 26, 2005, as the British Army prepares for the Iraqi elections which are scheduled to be held on Jan. 30.
A British soldier of the Princess of Wales Regiment trains his machine gun on a road checkpoint, during patrols around oil fields in Basra Province, Jan. 26, 2005.
A Royal Air Force crewman looks out as he flies over Baghdad, Jan. 25, 2005.
Iraqi security forces inspect the crater following an explosion outside a school in Baghdad, Jan. 26, 2005. Two schools slated to be used as polling stations were bombed overnight, and a bomb was found in a third school but defused.
An Iraqi woman walks past a wall covered with elections posters of different parties, in Baghdad, Jan 25, 2005. Iraqis are to choose a 275-member National Assembly and legislatures in each of the 18 provinces in Sunday's balloting.
U.S. Army 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry soldiers raid a gas station in Mosul, Jan. 25, 2005. Twelve men were detained, and guns and ammunition were recovered. U.S. and Iraqi officials fear a spike in bloodshed and have announced massive security measures to protect voters from possible insurgent attacks during the elections.
A U.S. Army soldier collects ammunition clips found during a weapons raid at a gas station in Mosul, Jan. 25, 2005.
A U.S. Army 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry soldier walks past the battalion's symbol, which was painted on a wall during a weapons raid at a gas station in Mosul, Jan. 25, 2005.
Smoke rises after an insurgent mortar and small arms attack on an Iraqi National Guard outpost at a train station in Mosul, Jan. 24, 2005.
Iraqis decorate a mosque in central Baghdad covered with posters of the prominent Shiite cleric Ali al-Sistani, Jan. 24, 2005.
Iraqi police secure the area following a car-bomb explosion in Baghdad, Jan 24, 2005. A suicide car bomber struck near the Iraqi interim prime minister's party headquarters.
U.S. Army paratroopers from Company C, 3rd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, stack up against the wall of the compound they are preparing to raid during an operation in Baghdad, Jan. 20, 2005.
Volunteers paste election posters of prominent Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani on a wall in Baghdad, Jan. 24, 2005.
Smoke rises following an explosion in the heavily protected "Green Zone" that hosts the U.S. and the British embassies and the Iraqi interim government, in Baghdad, Jan. 24, 2005.
Shoppers at an indoor market in Irbil, northern Iraq, walk past an election poster by a Kurdish coalition which depicts a man cradling his dead child following the March 1988 poison gas attack in the village of Halabja, Jan. 24, 2005.