Iraq plans security for polls

2004-12-31 10:08

Baghdad - Plans were unveiled here to deploy 100 000 Iraqi police and soldiers to stave off a bloodbath on election day, as United States President George W Bush said polls would go on as scheduled on January 30.

The deadly violence came as battles between US troops and Iraqi insurgents in the northern city of Mosul killed at least 26, including a US soldier, and 30 people died when a booby-trapped house in Baghdad exploded.

A dozen Iraqi deaths on Thursday brought the three-day toll to well over 100.

The grim business of hostage taking again surfaced, with two Lebanese businessmen kidnapped in an upmarket neighbourhood of Baghdad late on Wednesday.

And the Iraqi government announced that a senior aide to Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whose militants are behind many deadly attacks and killings of hostages, had been captured recently in Baghdad.

Sabotaging the poll

US military on Wednesday said insurgents detonated car bombs against a US patrol and attacked a combat outpost in Mosul triggering air strikes and clashes that left at least 25 rebels dead.

A US soldier died of wounds suffered in one of the car bombings, the military announced on Thursday.

Despite the volatile situation, Bush insisted elections must go ahead as planned on January 30, even as an Islamic militant group reiterated a threat to sabotage the poll.

A group linked to Al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Sunna, which claimed responsibility for last week's attack on US troops in Mosul, said it would target polling stations.

Bush on Wednesday said: "It's very important that these elections proceed,".

Iraqi officials and US have said they hope an increase in offensives against insurgents, coupled with airtight security and would allow January 30 voting to go ahead.

Brigadier General Erv Lessel, the US-led military's deputy director of operations, bluntly listed what he expected of insurgents.

Saddam Hussein's loyalists

"They will ... try to disrupt the process by attacking election officials as well as those Iraqi citizens who have volunteered to be candidates and campaign in the political process.

"There will be attempted attacks against polling places and polling locations."

Adel Lami, a ranking officer on Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission, said "about 100 000 police and national guard will be mobilised."

Lessel said US forces would ramp up their operations ahead of January 30 to disrupt the insurgency, with its turbulent mix of Saddam Hussein loyalists, criminals, Islamic fundamentalists and renegade tribal factions.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, dozens of Kurds protested violence against their community and to demand that regional elections be postponed.

Iraqi voters are to choose a transitional 275-seat national assembly, a parliament for the semi-autonomous Kurdish region and 18 provincial councils.

- AFP