Iraq to close borders, extend curfews
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-01-18 17:26

Iraqi officials announced Tuesday that they will close the nation's borders, extend nighttime curfews and restrict internal movement to protect voters during the Jan. 30 elections -- which insurgents have targeted in a deadly campaign of intimidation and terror.

An Iraqi man walks past the remains of an old tank and a wall covered with elections posters, in Baghdad, Monday, Jan. 17, 2005. The election planned for Jan. 30 is the first democratic vote in Iraq since the country was formed in 1932. Iraqi officials announced Tuesday that they will close the nation's borders, extend nighttime curfews and restrict internal movement to protect voters during the Jan. 30 elections. [AP]

Violence continued Tuesday, with a suicide car bomber detonating explosives at the the offices of a leading Shiite political party, killing himself and three other people as part of an apparent rebel campaign to frighten Shiites from vote. Masked gunmen killed a Shiite Muslim candidate in the Iraqi capital.

There was no word on the fate of a Christian archbishop who was abducted by gunmen Monday in front of his church in the northern city of Mosul. The Vatican condemned the kidnapping as a "terrorist act."

A statement by Farid Ayar of Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission said that Iraq's international borders will be closed from Jan. 29 until Jan. 31 except for Muslim pilgrims returning from the hajj in Saudi Arabia.

Iraqis will be barred from traveling between provinces and a nighttime curfew will be imposed during the same period, he said.

Such measures had been expected because of the grave security threat from Sunni Muslim insurgents who have vowed to disrupt the balloting.

Sunni Muslim militants, who make up the bulk of Iraq's insurgency, are increasingly honing in on Shiites in their campaign to ruin the Jan. 30 election that is widely expected to propel their religious rivals to a position of dominance.

Tuesday morning's car bombing gouged a crater in the pavement, left several vehicles in flames and spread shredded debris and flesh on the street outside the offices of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a main contender in the election.

The party, known here as SCIRI, has close ties to Iran, and is strongly opposed by Sunni Muslim militants.

Iraqi women react as they view the scene of a car bomb attack in Baghdad January 18, 2005. The suicide car bomb exploded on Tuesday at a Baghdad office of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a party official said, in the latest attack on Shi'ites before Iraq's January 30 election. The official said there was no immediate word on casualties. [Reuters]

The assailant told guards at a checkpoint leading to the party's office that he was part of SCIRI's security staff, but detonated his bomb-laden car at the guard post when he was not allowed to enter.

The U.S. military reported the bomber and three others were dead and four people were injured.

A spokesman for the Shiite party said it would not be cowed.

"SCIRI will not be frightened by such an act," Ridha Jawad said. "SCIRI will continue the march toward building Iraq, establishing justice and holding the elections."

In Mosul, Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa of the Syrian Catholic Church was seized while walking in front of his church, a priest said on condition of anonymity.

Christians make up just 3 percent of Iraq's 26 million people. The major Christian groups include Chaldean-Assyrians and Armenians with small numbers of Roman Catholics.

A third American trooper was killed in fighting in Iraq's troubled Anbar province, west of Baghdad, the military said Tuesday. Two other soldiers assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force were also killed in action there on Monday.

The military gave no further details and it was unclear if the three were killed in a suicide car bombing in the western city of Ramadi that resulted in U.S. casualties.

U.S. troops sent to check a suspicious vehicle came under small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire and the vehicle exploded, a military spokesman said.

Elsewhere in the Baghdad, masked gunmen shot dead a Shiite Muslim candidate running in the election in an attack near his house, his family said Tuesday.

Shaker Jabbar Sahl, 48, was gunned down in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite eastern neighborhood of Sadr City Monday afternoon.

The candidate was running on the 275-member slate of the Constitutional Monarchy Movement, which is headed by Sharif Ali bin Hussein, a cousin of Iraq's last king.

Sahl will be buried in the Shiite holy city of Najaf later Tuesday.

Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority has welcomed the vote, but many members of the country's Sunni Muslim minority want the ballot postponed, arguing that it is too dangerous for Iraqis to cast ballots and elections should not take place as the country is occupied by foreign troops.

The car bombings, beheadings, executions and other attacks are already taking a political toll, driving candidates underground. There are virtually no public campaign rallies and many candidates won't even have their names published on election posters for fear of being attacked.

Even some members of the Iraqi security forces who are to take charge of security for the vote are trying to hide their identities, pulling black ski masks over their faces. They too have bore the brunt of the violence in recent weeks.

The fledgling force is an easy target for insurgents, and questions have emerged over whether they'll be able to secure polling stations.

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