Four US soldiers and election candidate killed in Iraq

FOUR US Army soldiers died in a roadside bombing, gunmen killed a Sunni Arab candidate for parliament, and militants tried to blow up a leading Shi’ite politician in separate attacks yesterday.

It was the last day of campaigning for Iraq’s election.

More than 1,000 Sunni clerics, meanwhile, issued a religious edict, or a fatwa, urging Sunni Arabs to vote in tomorrow’s balloting - offering a seal of approval as members of the disaffected minority are expected to turn out in large numbers after mostly boycotting the landmark January 30 polls.

The bombing northwest of Baghdad killed four US soldiers assigned to Task Force Baghdad which handles security in the capital and the surrounding area.

The deaths bring to at least 2,149 the number of American soldiers to have died since the start of the war in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Ali al-Lami, executive director of the Iraqi Electoral Commission, appealed for peace when about 15 million people will be called on to vote in more than 6,200 polling stations.

Insurgent groups also have, in recent days, backed way from the threats they used to keep Sunni Arabs away from previous elections. The militant Islamic Army in Iraq told its fighters not to attack polling stations during the elections to avoid killing civilians, according to a statement published on Tuesday in the group’s name on the internet.

Gunmen in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, killed Sunni Arab candidate Mezher al-Dulaimi while he was filling up his car at a gas station. Al-Dulaimi had participated at a recent conference in Cairo, Egypt, attended by representatives of the country’s major factions.

A roadside bomb targeted the convoy of Sheik Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer, a Shi’ite member of the National Assembly who was elected with the governing United Iraqi Alliance. The Iraqi army said the explosion in Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, damaged one of the vehicles.

Police said a roadside bomb intended for one of their patrols in the central city of Samarra missed, instead killing a child and seriously injuring his father.

Early voting proceeded without problems yesterday for Iraqi security forces, hospital patients and prisoners, al-Lami said.

Balloting for Iraqis who live abroad opened on Tuesday, and began in Australia, where up to 20,000 registered Iraqi voters live. They are part of a group of 1.5 million voters living outside Iraq who will cast ballots.