Militant attacks kill 18 ahead of Iraq poll

INSURGENTS detonated a suicide car bomb at police headquarters in the Iraqi town of Baiji yesterday, killing at least 10 people, and shot dead eight Iraqi soldiers at a checkpoint ahead of January 30 polls.

Witnesses said burned bodies were scattered in the compound in Baiji, an oil refining town in the Sunni heartland north of Baghdad. A police official said at least 20 people were wounded, mostly police.

Near Baquba, another guerrilla stronghold northeast of the capital, gunmen opened fire at a checkpoint and killed eight soldiers, a National Guard officer said.

A statement from followers of al-Qaida ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq, said they had carried out an attack in Baquba and issued a new warning to Iraqi security forces, who are struggling to protect themselves.

“A lion from the martyrs’ battalion of al-Qaida Organisation of Holy War in Iraq carried out a heroic attack against the headquarters of atheism and tyranny in Baquba,” said the statement posted on an Islamist website.

“This is the fate of all the agents of the Jews and crusaders,” it added without elaborating.

The latest violence came amid growing concerns that guerrillas are stepping up efforts to stir up sectarian tensions ahead of the polls to elect a 275-member national assembly.

Gunmen killed eight Iraqi National Guard soldiers at a checkpoint in central Iraq. Some of the latest violence, including a series of weekend attacks along a highway south-east of Baghdad, occurred in provinces which US and Iraqi authorities have deemed safe enough to hold the elections and appear to be attempts to scare the country’s majority Shi’ites away from the January 30 polls.

Underscoring these security concerns, Shi’ite politician Salama Khafaji, who survived an ambush in central Baghdad on Sunday, said she has cancelled campaigning in the south after her staff discovered terrorist checkpoints on major routes.

“What we fear now most is terrorists wearing police uniforms,” Ms Khafaji said.

Yesterday, exiled Iraqis began registering to vote in their homeland’s first independent election in nearly 50 years. Iraqis can vote abroad in 14 countries, including the US, and there is a seven-day registration period that ends on January 23. Voting will begin on January 28 and continue until the January 30 election in Iraq.

Officials estimate 1.2 million Iraqis are eligible to vote overseas. In Britain, many of the estimated 150,000 Iraqis eligible to vote were confused about the fledgling political process and unsure who to vote for.

“People keep calling us and asking us, ‘who should we vote for?’” said Jabbar Hasan of the Iraqi Community Association, a London- based group for Iraqi expats. “We say it is up to you, you decide. It is a new experience, even for the political parties.”

The eight Iraqi National Guard soldiers’ deaths occurred at a checkpoint outside a provincial broadcasting centre in Buhriz, about 35 miles north-east of Baghdad. Four other Iraqi soldiers were injured in the attack, said an official at the nearby Baqouba hospital, Ali Ahmed. The area is considered a hotspot of the insurgency as violence flares before balloting.

The suicide attack occurred at a police station in Beiji, about 155 miles north of Baghdad on the main supply route north. Eight people were killed and 25 injured, according to a hospital official, but it was unclear if they were police or civilians.

In the Shi’ite holy city of Karbala south of Baghdad, meanwhile, police dismantled explosives placed in a car, said police spokesman Rahman Mshawi. The car was parked about three miles from two of Shi’ite Islam’s holiest shrines in the city.

Several of the bloodiest attacks in recent days have taken place in provinces that US and Iraqi officials have classified as secure enough to hold elections.

Late Sunday, a police captain, Shakir Aboud, was killed and another policeman was injured when their car was hit by a roadside bomb in Numaniyah, 85 miles south-east of Baghdad, according to a morgue official in Kut’s hospital.

The area around Kut has seen a recent flare-up in violence. In a separate attack, two Iraqi government auditors were shot to death late on Sunday after armed gunmen stopped their car in Suwaira, near Kut.

The two Iraqis, who worked in the provincial auditing department in Kut, were shot while riding in their car in Suwaira, about 25 miles south-east of Baghdad, according to an official at a Kut hospital.

The main road south had earlier been hit with violent attacks and kidnappings.