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BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A Kurdish ticket pulled
into second place ahead of U.S.-backed Prime
Minister Ayad Allawi's candidates in Iraq's national
election after votes were released Monday from the
Kurdish self-governing area of the north. Insurgents
struck Iraq's security forces with suicide bombs and
mortar fire, killing more than 30 people.
First election returns from the Sunni heartland -
including Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit -
confirmed on Monday that many Sunnis stayed away
from ballot box, leaving the field to Shiite and
Kurdish candidates. A Shiite-dominated ticket backed
by the Shiite clergy leads among the 111 candidate
lists, with a final tally of last week's election
for a 275-member National Assembly expected by
week's end.
On Tuesday a blast shook an Iraqi army recruiting
center in Baghdad, and police and hospital officials
said up to 14 people were killed.
The blast occurred near the old Muthana airfield in
the heart of the capital and may have been caused by
a suicide bomber, police said.
Meanwhile Allawi, who favors strong ties with the
United States, had hoped to emerge as a compromise
choice for prime minister, but the Shiite
cleric-backed ticket say they want one of their own
for the top job.
Kurds, estimated at 15-20 percent of the population,
gave most of their votes to a joint ticket made up
of the two major Kurdish parties, which was in
second with about 24 percent of the votes reported
as of Monday. One of the Kurdish leaders, Jalal
Talabani, has announced his candidacy for the
presidency.
Allawi's ticket trailed with about 13 percent of the
vote, with the Shiite ticket leading with about half
the votes. Shiites comprise about 60 percent of
Iraq's 26 million people.
Monday's attacks were the latest sign that
insurgents are stepping up attacks against Iraq's
security forces, which the United States hopes can
assume a greater role once a newly elected
government takes office. The bombings and
kidnappings have shattered a brief downturn in
violence after the Jan. 30 elections, the first
nationwide balloting since the fall of Saddam in
April 2003.
U.S. troops manning a checkpoint discovered four
Egyptian technicians who had been kidnapped the day
before in Baghdad, an Egyptian diplomat said. The
four were freed and some arrests were made, he
added.
Monday's deadliest attack occurred in Baqouba, where
a suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle outside
the gates of a provincial police headquarters,
killing 15 people and wounding 17, police Col.
Mudhahar al-Jubouri said. Many victims were looking
for jobs as policemen, al-Jubouri said.
In Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, a suicide
bomber wandered into a crowd of security personnel
at a hospital and blew himself up, killing 12 people
and wounding seven, U.S. officials said.
Insurgents shelled a police station in Mosul with
more than a dozen mortar rounds Monday, killing
three civilians, police said. And one Iraqi was
killed and four others wounded when mortar shells
exploded near the City Council building in Samarra,
hospital officials said.
In Ramadi, an insurgent center west of Baghdad, the
body of an Iraqi National Guardsman was found on a
city street. Witnesses said he has been shot.
Separate postings on a Web site claimed
responsibility for the Baqouba and Mosul attacks in
the name of al-Qaida in Iraq, the group led by
Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The claims
could not be verified.
Many Sunni Arabs, estimated at 20 percent of the
population and the core of the insurgency, are
believed to have stayed home on election day, either
out of fear of insurgent reprisal or because of a
boycott call by Sunni clerics.
Election officials acknowledged thousands of people
in the Sunni-dominated Mosul area who wanted to vote
during the balloting were unable to because of
security. Fewer than a third of the planned 330
polling centers in Mosul and the surrounding
province managed to open on election day, officials
said.
Figures released Monday by the election commission
from Salaheddin province, which includes Tikrit,
also confirmed suspicions that many Sunnis avoided
the polls.
With results in from 80 percent of the province's
polling stations, the United Iraqi Alliance - which
is backed by the country's top Shiite clerics - had
the most votes with 27,645. The Kurdish Alliance was
next with 18,791 votes.
A party headed by the Sunni Arab president, Ghazi
al-Yawer, received only 15,832 votes. The faction
led by Allawi, a secular Shiite who ran on a law and
order platform, got just over 13,000.
Salaheddin includes such insurgency flashpoints as
Samarra and Beiji, as well as a major American
military base at Balad.
Some Sunni and Christian politicians who
participated in the election have accused officials
of denying thousands of people the right to vote,
especially in Ninevah province which includes Mosul.
They complained polling stations ran out of ballots
and voters were turned away.
Election commission officials acknowledged 15,188
people were unable to vote in one Ninevah town
alone, Bartala. They blamed the problems there and
elsewhere on the security crisis.
Officials said only 93 of a planned 330 polling
centers opened in Ninevah province. Gunmen looted
some polling places, stealing ballot papers,
commission official Izzedine al-Mahmoudi said.
Farooq Mabrouk, chief of the Egyptian mission in
Baghdad, gave no details of how the four Egyptian
technicians were freed and the U.S. military press
office said it had no information.
"It's the Americans who freed them," Mabrouk said.
"They were released and they will come to the
embassy."
The four, who were employed by a subcontractor of an
Iraqi mobile telephone company, were seized Sunday
in Baghdad.
Meanwhile, a Web posting in the name of the Jihad
Organization pledged to release Italian journalist
Giuliana Sgrena in a few days because an
investigation determined she was not a spy and after
an appeal for her freedom by Sunni clerics. The
statement's authenticity could not be verified.
Sgrena, 56, a reporter for the communist daily Il
Manifesto, was kidnapped Friday by gunmen who
blocked her car outside Baghdad University. An
earlier posting by the Jihad Organization claimed
responsibility and gave Italy 72 hours to withdraw
its troops from Iraq.
A spokesman for the Iraqi police in Babil province,
Capt. Muthana Khalid Ali, withdrew a report that 22
Iraqi security troops and 14 insurgents had been
killed Sunday night when insurgents tried to storm a
police station in a village near Mahawil south of
Baghdad.
Ali had said the fighting raged for about an hour
and five Iraqi national guardsmen and 17 police were
killed, as well as 14 insurgents. The U.S. command
denied the report, and Ali said Monday he has
misread an initial police report.
He said 12 suspected insurgents were arrested in the
village after an ambush killed two Iraqi soldiers
and wounded four others.
© 2005 AP. All rights reserved.
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