The U.S. military, meanwhile, denied a report by the Associated Press that 22 Iraqi troops and 14 insurgents had been killed Sunday night when rebels tried to storm a police station in Mahawil, 50 miles south of Baghdad.
In a telephone interview, Col. Qais Hamza Abed, the provincial police chief, confirmed the clash but said the toll was far lower. He said that Iraqi troops had raided a village near Mahawil and that three policemen and three Iraqi soldiers had been killed and about 25 wounded in the ensuing clashes. Twenty-three suspects were arrested, he said.
U.S. soldiers guard the site of a bombing in Mosul, northern Iraq, in which the attacker blew himself up in a hospital compound, killing 11 police officers.
(AP Photo)
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The election returns announced Monday were the first to come from largely Kurdish northern Iraq. As expected, an alliance of the two main Kurdish parties -- the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party -- won an overwhelming share of votes. A third Kurdish-dominated province has yet to report.
While incomplete -- and election officials said the proportions could be misleading -- the new total gave the Kurdish alliance about 1.1 million votes, still far behind the 2.3 million for the largely Shiite list backed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's most influential religious leader. Allawi's bloc has about 620,000 votes so far.
In a sign of poor turnout by Sunni Arabs, returns from a predominantly Sunni province, Salahuddin, showed the Shiite list with the most votes out of the 80 percent counted so far, followed by the Kurdish parties, suggesting that most Sunni residents didn't go to the polls. Following the top vote-getters was a list led by Iraq's Sunni Arab president, Ghazi Yawar. The capital of Salahuddin is Tikrit, which is located near the home town of former president Saddam Hussein and is a Sunni stronghold, but the province also has significant Kurdish and Shiite enclaves.
With much of the vote tabulated, one official close to international nongovernmental groups predicted that the Shiite list would win between 57 percent and 62 percent of the votes, followed by the Kurdish parties with 22 percent and Allawi's group with 18 percent. The official, who has access to the vote totals, spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.
He estimated that total turnout would be between 59 percent and 63 percent, although only about 20 percent of Sunni residents in three provinces may have ended up voting. The official said the percentages could change with the final results. The precise numbers will be crucial because a two-thirds vote will be needed in the 275-member parliament for key decisions such as choosing the president and two deputy presidents.
At a news conference Monday, election officials said that more than 15,000 people had been unable to vote in one town near Mosul. Gunmen had looted other polling stations and tampered with ballot boxes, they said, and only about 93 out of 330 stations opened across the province. The irregularities have angered members of Iraqi religious minorities in the area, who contend the problems deprived them of their right to vote. One group, the Christian Democratic Assyrian Movement, has demanded new balloting.
Special correspondents Dlovan Brwari in Mosul and Hassan Shammeri in Baqubah contributed to this report.
