Iraqis vote amid violence

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraqis voted today in their country’s first free election in a half-century and insurgents made good on threats of violence, launching a deadly suicide bombing and mortar strikes at several polling stations across Iraq. Just hours after polls opened, at least seven people were dead, including four policemen.

Casting his vote, President Ghazi al-Yawer called it Iraq’s first step “toward joining the free world.”

Despite the heavy attacks, turnout was brisk in some Shiite Muslim and mixed Shiite-Sunni neighborhoods, but the polls were deserted in heavily Sunni cities like Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra west and north of Baghdad.

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.

In the heavily Sunni town of Mahmoudiya in the so-called triangle of death south of Baghdad, the only cars on the streets were ambulances.

The suicide attack in western Baghdad killed three policeman and one other person and wounded several, while mortar attacks in Khan al-Mahawil, 40 miles south of Baghdad, killed another policeman at a polling station.

Witnesses said three other people were wounded when a rocket or mortar landed near a polling station in Sadr City, the heart of Baghdad’s Shiite Muslim community. Two mortars hit near the Ministry of Interior on the city’s eastern edge, one witness said.

Heavy explosions and dozens of mortar attacks broke out across Baghdad, and in several other cities, including Baquoba, Basra and Mosul.

Al-Yawer was among the first to cast ballots, voting alongside his wife at election headquarters in the heavily fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad. As poll workers watched, he marked two ballots and dropped them into boxes, and then 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.”

Several hours later, Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi cast his ballot at the same polling station.

Final results will not be known for seven to 10 days, but a preliminary tally was expected late today.

Voters nationwide began trickling past police guards and heavy security into schools and other buildings converted into polling centers. About 300,000 Iraqi and American troops are on the streets and on standby to protect voters.

“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 military. “I voted for the rule of law.”

A spokesman for Iraq’s elections commission said all the nearly 5,200 polling stations nationwide were opening on schedule.

There were no signs of voting in the Sunni Muslim stronghold cities – and rebel centers – of Fallujah and Ramadi, west of Baghdad. Sunni extremists, fearing victory by the Shiites, had called for a boycott, claiming no vote held under U.S. military occupation is legitimate.

A low Sunni turnout could undermine the new government and worsen the tensions among the country’s ethnic, religious and cultural groups.

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.

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.

Overhead, helicopters clattered and a jet fighter roared by. 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.

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.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, buses hired by city officials picked up people walking toward voting centers to get them there more quickly.

An explosion was heard at the U.S. military base in Kirkuk in the north. Scattered small arms fire was heard near another U.S. base near Baghdad’s airport.

“So far the situation is excellent in all areas,” said the chairman of Iraq’s electoral commission, Abdul-Hussein Hendawi, before the report of the suicide attack. “All the polling centers, their doors are open. So far we haven’t heard about any problems.”

Nation in lockdown

Insurgents have vowed to disrupt the vote and threatened death to any Iraqis who show up. The country was under almost complete lockdown – across Iraq, U.S. tanks and armored vehicles blocked roads and bridges to prevent insurgent movement and the airport was closed.

Iraqi National Guardsmen, wearing black ski masks to hide their faces, roamed through the capital in SUVs and pickup trucks, machine guns mounted. Police and Iraqi soldiers set up checkpoints and randomly searched cars.

Iraqi officials have predicted that as many as 8 million of 14 million voters – just over 57 percent – will turn out for today’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.

U.S. Embassy hit

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.