Iraq: Election officials under armed escort began distributing ballot boxes to polling stations across Iraq yesterday as insurgents bent on sabotaging Sunday's national elections killed at least 17 people, including a leading political candidate.
The supply of boxes is the first visible sign of preparations for the ballot at polling stations, whose whereabouts are secret for now amid militant threats to election staff.
President George Bush has called on the country to brave the violence and seize a "historic opportunity" to elect a government, but many Iraqis say they will be scared away from voting by a bloody insurgent campaign.
Yesterday supporters of Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, posted a video on the Internet of their murder of a candidate from the party of the Prime Minister, Mr Iyad Allawi.
In the video, Salem Jaafar al-Kanani makes a "confession" and calls for Iraqis, especially the young, "not to collaborate with the enemy occupier" before being gunned down. On Monday Zarqawi announced "holy war" against the elections.
The jihadist Army of Ansar al-Sunna issued a "final warning" to stay away from the polls, saying anyone who voted would be marked for death, either during or after the election.
"Those who don't pay heed will have only themselves to blame," the group said in a statement on an Islamist website.
Elsewhere in Iraq's Sunni tribal heartlands, car-bombs targeted US and Iraqi security personnel, election workers and polling stations.
In the deadliest attack in Samara, 120 miles north of Baghdad, two suicide bombers struck in the city centre, killing eight.
Insurgents also blew up a polling station in Samara, and five other stations in neighbouring towns.
Sunni areas of Iraq have been worst- affected by the violence in the run-up to elections, forcing most mainstream Sunni political parties to withdraw from the poll.
The Iraqi government has announced tough security to try and stop terrorist attacks, including closing all land borders ahead of the election and a three-day long curfew.
The spate of attacks came as US military personnel investigated a helicopter crash that killed 31 US troops, the deadliest day for American forces since the war began.
Iraq's nascent security forces have borne the brunt of attacks by guerrillas, who brand them traitors. Iraqis wonder how their police and soldiers will be able to protect the polls when they hardly seem capable of protecting themselves.
Fears are running so high that most candidates are keeping their names secret, and officials are trying to withhold the location of voting centres to prevent attacks on election day.