Insurgents vowing total war on tomorrow's Iraqi election unleashed a surge of violence today, killing 17 people in bombings and rocket attacks as the country battened down for the landmark vote.
Security forces barricaded streets, sealed Iraq's borders and closed Baghdad airport, but bloodshed continued to stain the countdown to the first multi-party election for half a century.
With just a day to go before the polls, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a US-Iraqi security centre in the town of Khanaqin, northeast of Baghdad near the border with Iran. The US military said three Iraqi soldiers and five civilians were killed.
Most other attacks were concentrated in the Sunni heartland north of Baghdad where the insurgency has been fierce and many once-privileged Sunni Arabs plan to boycott the election. Three civilians were killed in a roadside bombing in the city of Samarra, and a rocket attack on an Iraqi army base in the town of Duluiya killed three soldiers. I
nsurgents blew up an explosives-laden donkey cart outside a polling station, killing a guard, in the town of Sharqat, south of Mosul, witnesses said. Mortar rounds hit a voting centre in the refinery town of Baiji, wounding four guards.
Three Iraqi contractors abducted a week ago were found shot dead in the town of Balad. Insurgents brand all Iraqis working with US forces as collaborators and have killed hundreds. With tension running high in the capital, insurgents carried out a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the fortified Baghdad Hotel. There was no word of casualties.
South of Baghdad, a Iraqi woman and her child were killed when mortar rounds targeting a US base in Musayyib struck their home, security officials said. US troops killed two Iraqis in a car near the western city of Ramadi, according to witnesses.
The election forms the cornerstone of the Bush administration's plan to transform Iraq from dictatorship to democracy after the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. But it risks fuelling the insurgency and fomenting sectarian strife.
Al Qaeda's shadowy leader in Iraq, Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has vowed to create a bloodbath at the polls. A statement from his group called voting stations "centres of infidelity and immorality" and warned Iraqis to stay away. The US military said insurgent attacks had more than tripled to 98 on Thursday from 29 last Saturday.