Copies of Iraqi constitution are distributed in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Some shopkeepers refused to hand out copies of the constitution, fearing death threats from insurgents. Others tried to get rid of them as fast as possible. Two dozen boxes ended up in a garbage dump, the blue booklets spilling out into the trash.

“They’re a danger,” shopkeeper Khalid al-Jabouri said Thursday as he pressed multiple copies on any Iraqi who would take them, trying to quickly empty the cartons delivered to his store for distribution to voters before the national referendum on Oct. 15.

The first copies of the charter were given out in a Baghdad neighborhood. But it was a tough place to start – the southern Dora district, where insurgents run rampant and there are killings nearly every day.

For residents who received copies, it was finally a chance to judge for themselves the constitution that has been strongly backed by leaders of the country’s Shiite Muslim majority and the Kurds, but is opposed by leaders of the formally dominant Sunni Arab minority.

“If we like it, we will vote ‘yes.’ If we don’t, we’ll say ‘no,’ ” said Lamia Dhyab, a Shiite woman in a head-to-toe veil after getting her copy, emblazoned with the slogan “The constitution is in your hands.”

Nearby a campaign poster for the referendum proclaimed, “Don’t let others decide your constitution on your behalf.”

Elsewhere, the process was slow in getting started. Booklets are being distributed at stores that give out monthly government-subsidized rations, but in cities in the north and south, shops had yet to receive their copies. Other neighborhoods in the capital were expected to start passing them out in the coming days.

Sunni insurgents, determined to wreck the referendum, continued their wave of violence with attacks in and around the capital that killed at least 20 Iraqis and an American soldier.

In the deadliest assault, a suicide bomber boarded a minibus packed with 14 passengers – officers going to the police academy and students and workers headed home to the Shiite district of Sadr City. The blast killed at least nine and wounded nine more, Police Capt. Abbas Ali said.

The terrorist group al-Qaida in Iraq has called for increased attacks during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which began this week, and more than 290 people have been killed in attacks the past 11 days – many of them Shiites.

The drafting of the constitution – a process U.S. and Iraqi officials hoped would unite the country’s disparate factions – has instead sharply divided them. Moderate Sunni Arab leaders are urging their followers to vote “no,” hoping to defeat a charter they say will fragment Iraq.