BAGHDAD, Nov. 21 -- Iraq's electoral commission on Sunday set Jan. 30 for elections to choose a National Assembly, a vote that could deliver power to Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority after decades of disenfranchisement. The balloting, however, remained imperiled by calls for a Sunni Muslim boycott and a persistent insurgency that has roiled Sunni regions.
Under an interim constitution, the election was required to take place before the end of January, so the date itself was not unexpected.
U.S. troops search for insurgents suspected of planting a roadside bomb in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, where rebel activity has surged recently.
(Photos Jim Macmillan -- AP)
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But in recent weeks, attacks have intensified in cities such as Mosul and Ramadi, as well as Baghdad, where battles this weekend between rebels and U.S. troops backed by Apache helicopters sent a shudder through the capital. Key Sunni figures have said that unless the election is delayed until a semblance of calm returns, they will sit out the vote.
"There is no possibility under these circumstances for people to do a proper filling of forms and registration," said Ayad Samarrai, a spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party, whose leader has called for a postponement of the vote.
Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, has insisted that the rebellion will be crushed by U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies before voting takes place, and Shiite religious leaders such as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani have pushed hard for a vote to take place on time. Posters endorsing the election have gone up in Shiite neighborhoods, and even anti-American clerics such as Moqtada Sadr have stopped short of joining the largely Sunni boycott.
The election will choose a 275-member National Assembly. In turn, that body will select a new government to replace the current appointed leadership and will oversee the drafting of a constitution. If the constitution is ratified, another election will be held in December 2005 to seat a permanent government.
Campaigning for the January election is scheduled to begin on Dec. 15, although Hussain Hindawi, chairman of the nine-member electoral commission, acknowledged that security was a problem.
Assassinations, raids and ambushes erupted across Iraq's Sunni region again Sunday, with a particularly bloody day reported in Ramadi, a provincial capital west of Fallujah.
The U.S. military said Marines at a checkpoint fired on a bus after its driver ignored warning shots and shouts to stop. Three civilians were killed and five wounded. Footage aired on Arab satellite channels showed the vehicle's windows blown out, with glass and blood on the floor. Area residents carried away the wounded.
Insurgents in Ramadi hijacked a convoy carrying Iraqi National Guard troops, killing nine guardsmen and wounding 17, the Reuters news agency reported. Other clashes erupted in the vicinity between U.S. troops and insurgents who have dramatically stepped up their activity there.
In the northern city of Mosul, where there has been a similar surge in violence, the bodies of at least two men killed by insurgents were left in a street Sunday, a day after U.S. troops discovered the corpses of nine Iraqi soldiers who had been shot in the back of the head. In Khalis, north of Baghdad, assailants killed the police chief and his driver.
In an Internet statement, a group affiliated with Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi asserted that it had killed 17 Iraqi National Guardsmen from Kisik, about 30 miles west of Mosul.
Allawi's office announced that his elderly cousin, Ghazi Allawi, had been released by his kidnappers, nearly two weeks after he was abducted with his wife and daughter-in-law. The women were released on Nov. 15.
