Seven die in poll attacks

2005-01-30 09:41

Baghdad - Iraqis voted on Sunday in their country's first free election in a half-century as insurgents made good on threats of violence, launching a deadly suicide bombing and mortar strikes at polling stations across Iraq.

Just hours after polls opened, at least seven people were killed, including two policemen.

Casting his vote, President Ghazi al-Yawer called it Iraq's first step "toward joining the free world".

The head of the main Shiite cleric-endorsed ticket, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, told reporters: "God willing, the elections will be good ... Today's voting is very important."

The country's interim leader, prime minister Ayad Allawi, chatted with poll workers and then smiled broadly after he cast his vote in the heavily fortified Green Zone.

Despite the heavy attacks, turnout was brisk in some Shiite Muslim and mixed Shiite-Sunni neighbourhoods, both in Baghdad and in southern cities like Basra.

But the polls were deserted in heavily Sunni cities like Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra west and north of Baghdad. In restive Mosul in the north, American troops and Iraqi soldiers roamed the streets, using loudspeakers to announce the locations of polling sites and urge people to vote. But streets were deserted.

In the heavily Sunni town of Mahmoudiya in the so-called "triangle of death" south of Baghdad, the only cars on the streets were ambulances. Through loudspeakers, they called people to vote, saying: "It is a national duty."

Three people were killed when mortars landed near a polling station in Sadr City, the heart of Baghdad's Shiite Muslim community. Seven to eight others were wounded, police said.

In addition, two people were killed and three wounded when a mortar round missed a school serving as a polling centre and hit a nearby home in the neighborhood of Amel in southwestern Baghdad, said police Captain Mohammed Taha.

A suicide bomber attacked one polling centre in a western part of Baghdad, killing one policeman and wounding several others, police said. And another policeman was killed in a mortar attack on a polling station in Khan al-Mahawil, about 60km south of Baghdad.

The heavy explosions and dozens of mortar attacks broke out across Baghdad, and in several other cities including Baquoba, Basra, Mosul and Samarra, about 08:30, less than two hours after voting began.

Despite the attacks, there was brisk turnout in the poor Shiite community of Jisr Diyala in eastern Baghdad, with the number of voters increasing as the morning wore on.

"I don't have a job. I hope the new government will give me a job," said one voter, Rashi Ayash, 50, a former lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi force. "I voted for the rule of law," he Ayash said after casting his vote.

A spokesperson for Iraq's elections commission said all the nearly 5 200 polling stations nationwide were opening on schedule.

- SAPA