Baghdad, Iraq – Final results from Iraq’s landmark referendum on a new constitution probably will not be announced until Friday at the earliest because of delays getting counts to the capital and a wide- ranging audit of an unexpectedly high number of “yes” votes, election officials said.
The returns have raised questions over the possibility of irregularities in the balloting.
With the delays, the outcome of the crucial referendum will remain up in the air possibly into next week.
Meanwhile, insurgent attacks began to heat up again after being nearly silent on referendum day Saturday when Iraqi polling stations were heavily protected.
A U.S. soldier was shot and killed in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, early Tuesday, the military said.
In fighting in western Iraq, two U.S. Marines and four militants were killed Monday near the town of Rutbah, not far from the Jordanian border, the military said.
At least 1,979 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Gunmen killed the deputy governor of Anbar province, Talib Ibrahim, spraying his car with automatic-weapons fire in Ramadi and wounding two of his bodyguards, police said. Anbar, the vast western Sunni region, is the main battleground between insurgents and U.S.-Iraqi forces.
Militants killed at least nine Iraqis elsewhere Tuesday in shootings and a mortar attack, including an adviser to the industry minister, one of the country’s top Sunni Arab officials, police said.
The handcuffed and mutilated bodies of six Shiites were pulled out of a pond where they were dumped north of Baghdad, and three other bodies were discovered elsewhere in the capital.
The audit, announced by the Independent Election Commission of Iraq on Monday, will examine results that have raised eyebrows because they show an oddly high number of “yes” votes – apparently including two crucial provinces that could determine the outcome of the vote, Ninevah and Diyala.
The election commission and United Nations officials supervising the counting have made no mention of fraud and have cautioned that the unexpected votes are not necessarily incorrect.
But Sunni Arab leaders who oppose the charter have claimed the vote was fixed in Ninevah and Diyala and elsewhere to swing them to a “yes” after initial results reported by provincial officials indicated the constitution had passed.
Both provinces are believed to have slight Sunni Arab majorities that likely voted “no” in large numbers, along with significant Shiite and Kurdish communities that largely cast “yes” ballots.
