18 die in pre-election attacks

2005-01-29 18:24

Baquba, Iraq - A suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt walked up to an Iraqi polling station on Saturday and set off a blast that killed a child and seven adults, including three soldiers, said police and the US military.

The attack was one of a series by insurgents in which at least 18 people were killed on the eve of Iraq's historic election despite massive security measures across the country.

The suicide bomber approached workers putting up protective barriers around the voting centre in Khanaqin, a town near the border with Iran.

The blast killed the child, the three soldiers and four of the workers and wounded seven more workers, the sources said.

The polling centre is close to the headquarters of a Turkmen political party.

In Sulimaniyah, an official with the Kurdistan Patriotic Union said the attacker had been identified as a Sudanese member of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network.

"It was a Sudanese member of al-Qaeda," Molla Bakhtiar, a member of the party's political bureau, told reporters.

Neither US nor Iraqi authorities could confirm the statement.

Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born fugitive with a $25m price on his head, has taken a high profile role opposing the elections and threatening "all-out war" against everyone involved.

In Samara, 120km north of Baghdad, a soldier and a policeman were killed in clashes with insurgents, police said. Four soldiers and two civilians were also wounded.

Insurgents have stepped up attacks on political parties, security forces and civilians in the run-up to Sunday's election.

As well as the suicide bomber, the US military said an insurgent was killed trying to attack a power station.

Four police were shot dead just before midnight on Friday on the main road between the towns of Baiji and Shorgat, about 200km north of the capital, police said.

Four polling stations in Baiji faced bomb attacks on Saturday and two on Friday night in Shorgat.

US forces clashed with insurgents in the Sunni stronghold town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, and one civilian was killed, a hospital doctor said.

American forces were deployed across the city. Three voting stations were opened and almost immediately came under rebel attack.

One policeman was shot dead in an attack on a polling station Saturday in Moqdadiya, 105km north of Baghdad.

Insurgents attacked a police patrol at Salman Pak, just south of Baghdad, on Saturday killing two security forces, police said.

Gunmen opened fire on a polling station in the Jamia district of western Baghdad wounding one woman, police said.

US and Iraqi forces fought insurgents in Baghdad and heavy bursts of gunfire erupted in the centre of the capital as a convoy of Iraqi soldiers moved from the Green Zone, the high security area that houses the Iraqi government and the US and British embassies.

The US military said Iraqi forces fought off an attack on a power station in the northern city of Mosul on Friday night, killing one insurgent.

- AFP