Iraqi elections under threat as insurgents step up campaign

IRAQ: Insurgents stepped up attacks in Iraq over the weekend, killing more than 50 Iraqis and six US troops and putting at risk the parliamentary poll due to be held at the end of January.

Yesterday guerrillas shot dead 17 Iraqi civilian employees and wounded 13 riding in buses to work at an arms dump at Tikrit, north of Baghdad. An Iraqi National Guard commander and three bodyguards died when a bomber detonated his vehicle alongside a convoy at the oil-refinery city of Beiji, north of Tikrit. One Iraqi soldier was killed and four were wounded when insurgents attacked their patrol near Samarra, south of Tikrit.

On Saturday, guerrillas staged attacks at the northern city of Mosul, the site of frequent Arab-Kurdish clashes, in Baghdad and elsewhere. In Mosul, militants rammed a vehicle into a convoy of Kurdish peshmerga militiamen, killing 17 and injuring 40. Peshmerga have been repeatedly targeted because they bolster US forces in the area and have participated in US-led assaults on the Arab cities of Najaf and Falluja.

An official of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Mr Jalal Dawood, was assassinated and two US soldiers were killed and four wounded. Nine bodies of security officers were found, four decapitated, raising the number to 66 of police or guardsmen found dead in the city since mid-November.

In Baghdad, seven Iraqis died and 49 were wounded when two suicide bombers struck the Salhiyah police station just outside the entrance of the heavily fortified Green Zone which houses Iraqi government offices and the US, British and other embassies. Two Iraqi men were mown down in the street in broad daylight.

One US soldier was killed in Baghdad, one at Baquba, and two at the Trebil crossing on the Iraqi-Jordanian border. Three Iraqis were killed in the oil-rich region of Kirkuk, a former intelligence officer was assassinated in Baquba, and the body of a woman official kidnapped last Thursday was found near Baiji. The governor of Dohuk province, Mr Nishervan Ahmad, escaped an assassination attempt claimed by the Islamist Ansar al-Sunna group.

As 850 British Black Watch troops withdrew from a temporary base south of Baghdad and travelled back to their permanent area of operations near Basra in the south, guerrillas reasserted themselves in the restive towns vacated by the regiment. The Black Watch had been deployed to control the approaches to Falluja during last month's US offensive against the city.

The spate of attacks followed Friday's bombings of Iraqi police stations in Baghdad which killed at least 26 and ended a relative lull in resistance operations. Since the fall of Falluja, rebels based there have scattered throughout the country and regrouped in order to mount calculated assaults on Iraqi police and national guardsmen. The insurgents' objective is to make it impossible to hold elections for a temporary parliament tasked with drawing up a new constitution. By targeting Iraqi national guardsmen and police, the resistance not only kills and injures members of these forces, reducing their numbers, but also intimidates others.

The desertion rate in both the guard and police has risen to 40 per cent. The US and the interim Iraqi government had hoped that Iraq's own security forces would be in a position to provide security for the poll and that US and other foreign troops could remain in the background.

In spite of the rising violence, Gen John Abizaid, the US commander in Iraq, speaking in Bahrain on Saturday, insisted that the election should go ahead. "We have to acknowledge that the elections are not going to be perfect, but it is important that the elections happen." However, he admitted that Iraq's security forces could not provide adequate security. While these forces had grown in size, he said, they "have to be seasoned more, trained more. So it's necessary to bring more American forces."

The 138,000 US troops will be increased by 12,000 by extending the tour of duty of 10,000 marines and deploying 2,000 fresh troops from the US. Gen Abizaid's view was contradicted by former UN envoy to Iraq, Mr Lakhdar Brahimi, in an interview in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. He said the vote could be held only if "security improves". He criticised the US for invading Iraq in March 2003 and creating "a mess."