Baghdad, Iraq – Four U.S. Army soldiers died in a roadside bombing, gunmen killed a Sunni Arab candidate for parliament, and militants tried to blow up a leading Shiite politician in separate attacks today, the last day of campaigning for Iraq’s election.
More than 1,000 Sunni clerics, meanwhile, issued a religious edict, or a fatwa, urging Sunni Arabs to vote in Thursday’s balloting – offering a seal of approval as members of the disaffected minority are expected to turn out in large numbers after mostly boycotting the landmark Jan. 30 polls.
The bombing northwest of Baghdad killed four Americans soldiers assigned to Task Force Baghdad which handles security in the capital and the surrounding area.
The deaths bring to at least 2,149 the number of U.S. service members to have died since the start of the war in 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Ali al-Lami, executive director of the Iraqi Electoral Commission, appealed for peace when about 15 million people will be called on to vote in more than 6,200 polling stations.
Insurgent groups also have in recent days backed way from the threats they used to keep Sunni Arabs away from previous elections.
The militant Islamic Army in Iraq told its fighters not to attack polling stations during the elections to avoid killing civilians, according to a statement published today in the group’s name on the Internet.
Gunmen in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, killed Sunni Arab candidate Mezher al-Dulaimi while he was filling up his car at a gas station. Al-Dulaimi had participated at a recent conference in Cairo, Egypt, attended by representatives of the country’s major factions.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said that the United States “condemns in the strongest terms the killing of candidates such as Mr. Mezher al-Dulaimi, one of the participants in the Cairo conference, and any attempt to intimidate voters. We want the elections to be clean and fair.” A roadside bomb targeted the convoy of Sheik Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer, a Shiite member of the National Assembly who was elected with the governing United Iraqi Alliance. The Iraqi army said the explosion in Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, damaged one of the vehicles.
Police said a roadside bomb intended for one of their patrols in the central city of Samarra missed, instead killing a child and seriously injuring his father.
Early voting proceeded without problems Monday for Iraqi security forces, hospital patients and prisoners, al-Lami said.
Balloting for Iraqis who live abroad opened today, and began in Australia, where up to 20,000 registered Iraqi voters live. They are part of a group of 1.5 million voters living outside Iraq who will cast ballots at polling centers in 15 countries, including the United States, Canada and the Netherlands.
Khalilzad said he was encouraged by the signs of increased participation.
“I appreciate the statements made by political and religious leaders calling on Sunni Arabs to participate and on insurgents to cease military operations. I believe that the next government will be more representative,” he said.
Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi held a pre-election rally in the southern city of Basra for about 1,000 supporters, while former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi hosted a gathering in Baghdad. No campaigning is allowed Wednesday to give Iraqis time to reflect ahead of the vote.
Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, told about 1,000 tribal leaders who gathered in Baghdad’s Jadriyah neighborhood that the military wing of his group – the Badr Brigade – was ready to help with election security.
“I declare that the Badr Organization is ready to mobilize 200,000 of its men in all parts of Iraq so that they can play a role in defending Iraqi and Iraqis,” said the black-turbaned cleric, who is heading the strong Shiite United Iraqi Alliance slate.
“Violence has no place in any democratic elections. This is a time for national reconciliation though the political process,” al-Lami said.
President Bush offered encouraging words from Washington to Iraqi voters but cautioned that the parliamentary elections “won’t be perfect.” “Iraqis still have more difficult work ahead, and our coalition and a new Iraqi government will face many challenges,” Bush said Monday in a speech in Philadelphia.
Sheik Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samaraie, who heads the Sunni Endowment, the government agency in charge of the maintaining Sunni mosques and shrines, said Iraqis have the right to choose the candidates they want.
“We call upon all the Iraqi people, and this is a fatwa from more than 1,000 Iraqi scholars who are urging Iraqis to vote,” he said, speaking to the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television.
The Islamic Army in Iraq, which last week claimed to have killed U.S. hostage Ronald Allen Schulz, stressed its decision not to attack polling stations did not mean it supported the political process and it vowed to continue attacking foreign and Iraqi security forces.
That call came one day after al-Qaeda in Iraq and four other Islamic extremist groups issued a rare joint statement denouncing the elections as a “satanic project” and vowing to continue their war to establish an Islamic government in the country. But the statement contained no clear threat to disrupt voting.
The authenticity of the claims could not be verified, but they appeared on Web sites that often publish extremist material.
The absence of a clear-cut threat could reflect the growing interest among Sunni Arabs, the foundation of the insurgency, to participate in the election. The Sunni boycott of the January ballot left parliament in the hands of Shiites and Kurds – a move that increased communal friction and cost the Sunnis considerable influence in drafting the constitution.
U.S. officials hope for a large turnout among the Sunni Arab minority, a development that could produce a government capable of winning the trust of the Sunnis and defusing the insurgency. That would enable U.S. and other foreign troops to begin heading home next year.
Sunni Arab politicians have promised an end to what they term abuse at the hands of the Shiite-dominated security services.
In the northern city of Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, Iraqi police and army enforced a ban on motor vehicle traffic unless the driver has a special permit.
After each polling station, mostly at schools, was checked by bomb-sniffing dogs, Iraqi police took control of the building and U.S. troops placed concrete barriers on all of the roads around it.
U.S. cargo trucks delivered the polling materials as well as food and water for the police and soldiers responsible for guarding the polling stations.
The ballots were scheduled to arrive only after election commission personnel were at the site, where they would remain until after the voting was completed. For the most part, plans were going on as scheduled today, local U.S. commanders reported.
