Iraqi security forces detained more than 200 suspected insurgents, including four Arab foreigners, in a crackdown that helped reduce attacks during Sunday's election, the interior minister said yesterday.
"What happened yesterday was the result of the security plans put in place by the Interior Ministry and Iraq's security forces for the election," Mr Falah al-Naqib told reporters.
He said 129 suspects had been rounded up near Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown in the Sunni region north of Baghdad, out of a total of 202 detained nationwide. The detainees included two Saudis, an Egyptian and a Yemeni, he said.
He said Iraqi security forces had also killed four insurgents in shoot-outs on polling day.
US and Iraqi security forces enforced draconian measures for the election, shutting down Iraq's borders and airspace, banning civilian vehicles, imposing a dusk-to-dawn curfew and putting tens of thousands of security men on the streets.
Suicide bombs and mortar attacks, mostly in Baghdad, killed 35 people, but failed to prevent millions of Iraqis from going to the polls in the first multi-party election in decades.
Mr al-Naqib said insurgents used a disabled child as one of their suicide bombers on election day. "A handicapped child was used to carry out a suicide attack on a polling site," he said.
"This is an indication of what horrific actions they are carrying out."
He gave no other details about the attack, but police at the scene of one the Baghdad blasts said the bomber appeared to have Down's Syndrome. - (Reuters)