By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqis voted Sunday in their country's first free election in a half-century and insurgents made good on threats of violence, launching three deadly suicide bombings and mortar strikes at polling stations across Iraq. At least 17 people were killed, including five policemen.
Casting his vote, Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi called it "the first time the Iraqis will determine their destiny." The country's mostly ceremonial president, Ghazi al-Yawer, said it was Iraq's first step "toward joining the free world."
Security was tight. About 300,000 Iraqi and American troops were on the streets and on standby to protect voters, who entered polling stations under loops of razor wire and after being searched.
Despite the heavy attacks, turnout was brisk in some Shiite Muslim and mixed Shiite-Sunni neighborhoods. Even in the small town of Askan in the so-called "triangle of death" south of Baghdad — a mixed Sunni-Shiite area — 20 people waited in line at each of several polling centers. More walked toward the polls.
"This is democracy," said an elderly woman in a black abaya, Karfia Abbasi. She held up a thumb stained with purple ink to prove she had voted.
In a potentially troublesome sign, however, the polls were deserted in heavily Sunni cities like Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra west and north of Baghdad. Sunni extremists, fearing victory by the Shiites, have called for a boycott, claiming no vote held under U.S. military occupation is legitimate.
The governor of the mostly Sunni province of Salaheddin, Hamad Hmoud Shagti, urged voters over the radio: "This is a chance for you as Iraqis to assure your and your children's future."
A low Sunni turnout could undermine the new government and worsen the tensions among the country's ethnic, religious and cultural groups.
The election is a major test of President Bush's goal of promoting democracy in the Middle East. If successful, it also could hasten the day when the United States brings home its 150,000 soldiers. At least 1,428 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
In restive Mosul in the north, American troops and Iraqi soldiers roamed the streets, using loudspeakers to announce the locations of polling sites and urging people to vote. But streets were deserted.
An election day ban on most private cars forced relatives and even police to help elderly people to the polls. Some were carried in the arms of relatives, or taken in push cars. At one polling place in eastern Baghdad, an Iraqi policeman in a black ski mask tucked his assault rifle under one arm and held the hand of an elderly blind woman to guide her to the polls.
The driving ban also affected the rebels. Several used belts of explosives rather than cars rigged with bombs to launch their suicide missions.
In the most deadly attack Sunday, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a polling station in western Baghdad, killing himself, three policemen and a civilian, officials said. Witness Faleh Hussein said the bomber approached a line of voters and detonated an explosives belt. Six people were also injured.
In a second suicide attack at a school in western Baghdad, three people and the bomber died, police said.
And in a third suicide mission, at a polling center in a western part of Baghdad, one policemen and the bomber died, police said.
Also, 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 when a mortar round missed a school serving as a polling center and hit a nearby home in southwestern Baghdad, said police Capt. Mohammed Taha.
Another policeman was killed in a mortar attack on a polling station in Khan al-Mahawil, south of Baghdad.
"There will be some isolated attacks here and there, but they will not stop the voting," said Majid Lazem Fartousi, one of 159 candidates on the ticket of the Democratic Iraqi Movement.
Al-Yawer was among the first to cast his ballot, voting alongside his wife at election headquarters in the heavily fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad. After voting, he walked away with an Iraqi flag given to him by a poll worker.
"I'm very proud and happy this morning," al-Yawer told reporters. "I congratulate all the Iraqi people and call them to vote for Iraq."
Final results will not be known for seven to 10 days, but a preliminary tally could come as early as late Sunday.
A spokesman for Iraq's elections commission said all the nearly 5,200 polling stations nationwide opened on schedule. Iraqis were marking two ballots: one to elect the National Assembly, the other for a provincial legislature.
"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."
Shiite Muslims, estimated at 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people, are expected to turn out in large numbers, encouraged by clerics who hope their community will gain power after generations of oppression by the Sunni minority.
"God willing, the elections will be good ... Today's voting is very important," said the head of the main Shiite cleric-endorsed ticket, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim.
At one voting center in the heavily Shiite Muslim city of Nasiriyah in the south, about 40 people lined up waiting to vote.
But at a school-turned-polling station in Baghdad's middle-class Karrada neighborhood, a mixed Shiite-Sunni area, only three voters appeared in the first 45 minutes.
Under the eye of sharpshooters looking down from nearby rooftops, they were searched and forced to remove their jackets and take their batteries from their cell phones. Occasional bursts of machine gun fire echoed through Baghdad's deserted streets.
Voting was brisk as expected in Kurdish-ruled areas of northern Iraq, where voters were also choosing a regional parliament.
"I can't read or write so I ticked the number" of the Kurdish ticket, said Fouad Fattah, 29, a policeman in Irbil. "I was afraid to make a mistake. I hope the Kurds get a great number of votes so that we can rule ourselves."
One man marked the forms for his 70-year-old father who was unable to read it himself.
"This is our first (voting) experience. Naturally people are confused," said polling station manager Abdullah Ahmed. "We are not used to it. They don't even know how to put the ballot papers in the boxes."
In Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, only seven people showed up in the first two hours of voting at a school in the city center, while in the diverse city of Baquoba, jubilant voters danced and clapped outside a polling station.
Insurgents have threatened death to any Iraqis who show up to vote. On Sunday, an Internet posting claiming to be from an al-Qaida linked group that had previously threatened voters warned: "Democracy and representative councils, brothers, is part of the religion of the infidels. ... Accepting them is ... renouncing Islam."
Iraqi officials have predicted that up to eight million of 14 million voters — just over 57 percent — will turn out for Sunday's election. Voters in the Kurdish-run north also will select a regional parliament.
Iraqi expatriates in 14 countries cast absentee ballots on the second of three days of voting abroad, and officials said that by late Saturday, about two-thirds of those registered had voted so far. Iraqi leaders had been disappointed that less than a quarter of the estimated 1.2 million expatriate Iraqis eligible to vote worldwide registered to do so.
Despite the strict security and a nighttime curfew, guerrillas hit the U.S. Embassy compound in the Green Zone with a rocket Saturday evening, killing a Defense Department civilian and a Navy sailor and wounding four other Americans, according to State Department spokesman Noel Clay in Washington.
The Defense Department released grainy footage shot from an unmanned spy drone of what it said showed figures shooting a rocket and running away. It then showed U.S. soldiers entering a house where the suspected militants sought refuge, and said seven people were arrested.
Another American soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad.
Bush said in his weekly radio address from the White House that the election "will add to the momentum of democracy."
"The terrorists and those who benefited from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein know that free elections will expose the emptiness of their vision," he said.
A ticket endorsed by the country's leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is expected to fare best among the 111 candidate lists. However, no faction is expected to win an outright majority, meaning possibly weeks of political deal-making before a new prime minister is chosen.
Ha!,that's gotta be one of the most assinine,idiotic statements in a "news report" that I've ever read.
And I've read some doozies.
B-but how can that be? The lamestream press went on and on about how Saddam Hussein had 100% turnout and 100% of the vote back in his 'election.'
... and including three suicide bombers.