Blackout, attacks mar eve of Iraq vote
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-10-15 10:31

On Thursday, Iraqi Islamic Party banners urging a "no" vote had been removed from where they hung near monuments such as the Grand Imam mosque.

Other Sunni Arab parties still oppose the charter. They fear it would divide Iraq into three separate districts: powerful mini-states of Kurds in the north and majority Shiites in the south, both capitalizing on Iraq's oil wealth. By contrast, many Sunnis fear, their minority would be left isolated in central and western Iraq with a weak central government in Baghdad.

In another insurgent attack in Baghdad on Friday, the Muslim day of worship in Iraq, a roadside bomb wounded four Iraqi civilians when it exploded near one of the many schools in the capital that U.S. soldiers are fortifying with concrete barriers and barbed wire so they can be used as polling stations in Saturday's vote, said police 1st Lt. Mua'taz Saladin.

As police removed bloodstained shoes and shattered glass from damaged cars at the scene, one of the U.S. soldiers working there remained defiant. "This won't affect anything planned for tomorrow. The election will go off without a hitch," Lt. David Forbes said in an interview with an Associated Press Television News.

In Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded near a Kurdistan Democratic Party office, wounding five civilians, said police Brig. Sarhad Qadir.

On Wednesday night, Iraq's National Assembly endorsed last-minute changes to the draft constitution worked out by Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni powerbrokers that will allow a new parliament scheduled to be elected in December to adopt amendments to the constitution.

The compromise may have been enough to split the Sunni "no" campaign, boosting chances of the referendum's passage.

The draft requires a simple majority vote to pass — but it can be defeated if two-thirds of voters in any three provinces say "no." Sunnis have a majority in four of Iraq's 18 provinces, but most overcome strong Shiite and Kurdish communities in several of them.

Coalition forces have warned of a spike in attacks by the militants ahead of Saturday's vote, and nearly 450 people have been killed in violence over the past 19 days, often by insurgents using suicide car bombs, roadside bombs and drive-by shootings.

Hundreds of Iraqi police and army troops have fanned out across Baghdad, and an eerie calm has settled over the capital and other cities, with little traffic on the streets, few pedestrians and many shops closed.

Coalition forces closed Iraq's borders and its international airport in Baghdad in another effort to improve security to protect voters. On Thursday, a new 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew was imposed and government offices and schools are closed for four days.

All civilian vehicles will be banned on Saturday as Iraqis are expected to walk by the thousands to 6,100 polling centers in Iraq.

In Shiite areas of Baghdad, hundreds of posters and banners urging a "yes" vote were plastered on many walls and shop windows.

But few such posters hung in mostly Sunni districts of the city.

In the so-called Triangle of Death, a mainly Sunni area south of Baghdad that is known for kidnappings and killings, there was no sign of posters either. On Thursday, Iraqi troops searched cars under the watchful eyes of comrades manning machine-gun positions nearby. U.S. helicopters hovered over the area. Traffic on the road through the "triangle" was thin.

"I will vote 'yes' so as to isolate the troublemakers," said Faisal Galab, a Sunni Arab sheik from the town of Youssifiyah, about 12 miles south of Baghdad. "I have asked my family and clan to vote 'yes.'"