16 die as Iraq goes to polls

2005-01-30 11:55

Baghdad - Sixteen people were killed and a dozen wounded on Sunday barely hours into Iraq's first free election in half a century as insurgents dispatched suicide bombers and fired a swathe of mortar and rocket attacks on polling stations.

A suicide bomber struck Sunday outside a polling centre in Baghdad, killing seven civilians and two policemen, an interior ministry source said, the second such attack in the capital on election day.

"The toll is nine killed, including seven civilians and two policemen, along with 12 wounded, seven of whom were civilians and five policemen," the source said, not counting the bomber who also died in the attack.

A policeman was killed and four others wounded when a bomber blew himself up near a polling station in Baghdad's upmarket Mansur district in the western part of the capital, the interior ministry said.

Police and soldiers had stopped the bomber as he tried to enter the sealed-off cordon around the polling station when the attacker detonated his explosives belt, a US military officer said. Two of the wounded were policemen and the others civilians.

Four people were killed and seven others wounded when a mortar struck a voting centre in Baghdad's Shiite slum of Sadr City in the latest attack against the community expected to emerge as the resounding victors of the poll.

North of Baghdad, a female voter and a child were killed and 15 others wounded in a mortar attack on a polling station in the northern Iraqi town of Balad, police said.

US commanders have warned of suicide attacks, car bombs and mortar and rocket fire on Iraq's first election since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein almost two years ago as insurgents try to wreck the milestone event.

The unrest, which had already been predicted by world and Iraqi leaders, came despite a range of stringent security measures that included a ban on driving during polling day and the closure of Iraq's borders.

The ban on cars is aimed at preventing the suicide car bomb attacks on polling stations that insurgents have used with deadly frequency against security forces in the run-up to the vote.

Six explosions jolted the northern Iraqi city of Mosul although the general hospital had no immediate word on vote in sections of the city.

Iraqi soldiers surrounded polling stations, and it was casualties. But amid heavy security, people were turning out to difficult for people to move around.

West of Mosul, in the city of Tall Afar, one man was wounded in fighting between insurgents and US forces, medical sources said.

Arms fire also reverberated briefly in the northern flashpoint city of Baquba and a roadside bomb exploded, but no one was hurt, an AFP correspondent said.

But people started to flock to polling stations to vote in Baquba despite the city being a frequent site of violence between US forces and insurgents.

In the southern city of Basra, mortars landed near two polling stations but there were no reports of casualties.

Police arrested one of the attackers who fled to a Sunni Muslim mosque and surrounded the mosque, named al-Hamza, Police chief Ali Hamadi told AFP.

- AFP