Iraqi insurgents staged a major ambush on a road south of Baghdad today, killing two policemen, wounding 14 and leaving at least 36 missing on the worst day of violence since last Sunday's election.
Police said militants attacked a police convoy as it travelled between Diwaniya, 180 km south of Baghdad, and the capital.
US forces sealed off the site of the ambush, near the Abu Ghraib area on Baghdad's western fringes. Police said some of the wounded were treated in hospital in Diwaniya.
The attack came a day after guerrillas in the north dragged Iraqi soldiers off a bus and shot 12 of them dead, and suggests the country's 22-month-long insurgency is far from over, despite its failure to stop last weekend's vote.
At least a dozen civilians were also killed in today's bloodshed, the worst this week.
Iraqi policemen and soldiers are increasingly bearing the brunt of insurgent attacks as US troops try to assume a back seat role in preparation for an eventual withdrawal from the country they invaded in March 2003.
In a reminder of the perils of voting in Iraq, militants shot dead two civilians today in a car near the town of Balad, north of Baghdad. Local police said the victims had been singled out because they had voted.
At least 10 other civilians were killed in a spate of attacks across the country, the police and army said.
A roadside bomb killed three near the central town of Ishaaq and a Turkish truck driver was killed on a road between the northern cities of Baiji and Mosul.
South of Baghdad, near the largely Shia town of Hilla, gunmen drew up alongside the car of a local government official and shot him dead before escaping.
Hospital sources said US troops killed three Iraqis in the rebellious Sunni city of Ramadi and police said militants killed two men suspected of working at an American base north of Baiji.
Final results of Sunday's poll have yet to be announced and officials say it could be another week before they are.
With around 1.6 million votes counted from Baghdad and five mostly Shia southern provinces, the main Shia block had polled more than three quarters of votes cast. A list headed by Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi was second on around 20 per cent.
Officials cautioned, however, that Shias had been expected to score well in those provinces and the figures should not be seen as representative of the entire country.
"Only God Almighty knows the final figures," electoral commissioner Safwat Rashid told a news conference. "We are still in the process of counting."
Representatives of the Sunni Arabs, only 20 percent of Iraq's population but dominant under Saddam, look certain to have fared badly, raising fears they will not be adequately represented in the new 275-member national assembly.
Many Sunni parties boycotted the vote, saying it was tainted by the US-led occupation. Some said their supporters had been unable to vote as they lived in areas where insurgency is rife.