Car bomb kills 10 in Iraq; 8 soldiers shot dead

January 17, 2005

Insurgents detonated a suicide car bomb at police headquarters in the Iraqi town of Baiji on Monday, killing at least 10 people, and shot dead eight Iraqi soldiers at a checkpoint in attacks ahead of January 30 polls.

Witnesses said burnt bodies were scattered in the compound in Baiji, an oil refining town in the Sunni heartland north of Baghdad.

A police official said at least 20 people were wounded, mostly police.

Near Baquba, another guerrilla stronghold north-east of the capital, gunmen opened fire on a checkpoint and killed eight soldiers, a National Guard officer said.

Iraqi security forces have borne the brunt of insurgent attacks as the polls approach. Election officials have also been repeatedly targeted and threatened, and voting centres - many in schools - have been hit by insurgents.

Police in Basra said mortars were fired overnight at three schools in the city that will be used as voting centres. They said nobody was wounded.

Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, is in the mainly Shi'ite south of the country where support for the elections is strong.

Iraq's 60-per cent Shi'ite majority expect the polls to cement their dominance in Iraqi politics after years of oppression during the rule of Saddam Hussein.

But many Sunni Arabs, who make up around 20 per cent of the Iraq's nearly 26 million people and from whom Saddam drew most of his ruling class, want the vote to be postponed.

Guerrilla violence and intimidation in Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland means that even many Sunnis who want to vote are too afraid to do so.

Several major Sunni Arab parties say they will boycott the polls after their calls for a delay were unheeded.

A series of attacks targeting Shi'ites in Iraq has raised concern that Sunni insurgents want to take advantage of sectarian disagreements over the election to try to provoke more conflict between the two communities.

Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the US government have insisted the polls should go ahead, although they concede that some areas may be too unsafe for voting to take place.

The government says it is preparing a range of measures to protect voting stations, including a possible ban on traffic. Iraqis in dangerous areas will also be allowed to register and vote on the same day, rather than having to pre-register.

US troop levels will be at their highest in Iraq over the election, at around 150,000. American soldiers are expected to form an outer line of defence while Iraqi security forces will guard polling stations.

"We will provide broad area security coverage, while the Iraqi military and police provide security closer to the polling sites and polling centres. You won't see coalition forces at the polling centres," the top US commander in Iraq, General George Casey, said in a statement today.

"You will see Iraqi police primarily, and those police will be supported by other Iraqi police and National Guard. So, it will essentially be a ring concept around the polling centres."

Casey said that including both foreign troops and Iraqi security forces, there would be close to 300,000 soldiers and police providing security on election day.

"Is there going to be violence on election day? There is, but it's important that we understand what's happening here. It's not just about violence," he said.

"It's about former regime loyalists and foreign terrorists murdering innocent Iraqis and Iraqi security forces to stop them from exercising their right to vote."