Troops Mobilize for Iraqi Balloting

Marine, Nine Others Killed on Eve of 3-Day 'Election Holiday'

An Iraqi soldier walks through the rubble of a Baghdad school damaged by an explosion. The school, like one in Samarra blown up by insurgents, was a prospective polling place. Tens of thousands of Iraqi security officers and about 150,000 U.S. troops are to provide security for Sunday's vote. (Hadi Mizban -- AP)

BAGHDAD, Jan. 27 -- Car bombings and other insurgent attacks continued across central Iraq on Thursday, as election officials made final preparations for Sunday's nationwide ballot and civilian monitors prepared to risk their lives assessing its conduct.

At least nine Iraqis and a U.S. Marine were reported killed in the violence, which came as tens of thousands of Iraqi security officers and about 150,000 American troops launched a massive effort to safeguard polling stations from a promised insurgent onslaught.

"We have also warned everyone against going to and being present at the so-called polling centers of this mockery and dirty blaspheming games, for voting in those centers means electing gods to be worshiped other than Allah," said a statement posted on an Internet message board by the Ansar al-Sunna Army, an extremist group that has asserted responsibility for many of the worst attacks in Iraq. The message was one of several issued by groups opposing the elections.

"We hereby repeat our warning to everyone that the [polling centers] are going to be targeted by the Mujaheddin," the statement said. "And let the nominees know that, even if they are not elected, they are not safe from the hands of the Mujaheddin."

As night fell in Baghdad, Iraqi police threw up checkpoints and patrolled in force on the eve of a three-day "election holiday," as authorities of the U.S.-backed interim government are calling the checkerboard of curfews and other restrictions on movement in effect across much of the country starting Friday.

The head of Iraq's election commission said final preparations were falling into place for the balloting, despite a challenging schedule for organizing the elections and continued threats against poll workers, who number about 6,000.

Hussein Hindawi, the former journalist who heads the Independent Election Commission of Iraq, said polling places would operate even in insurgent hot spots such as Mosul and Anbar province, which includes Fallujah and Ramadi. In Mosul, where a heavily reinforced U.S. brigade has pushed back a stubborn insurgent challenge, poll workers were being hired from beyond the city limits and paid handsomely to staff polling stations, Hindawi said.

"They are people from Nineveh [province] who are not from Mosul," he said. "And Arab people, not Kurdish." The insurgency in Mosul, an ethnically mixed city of 1.8 million, is chiefly based in the Sunni Arab sectors of the city, and battled by Iraqi forces that draw heavily from the country's population of ethnic Kurds.

"We want to protect our people," Hindawi said. "It's not easy."

Also at risk are almost 10,000 Iraqi civilians who have volunteered to assess the conduct of the voting as election monitors.

"To say if it was free and fair, or to say it was not -- in both cases, we are in great danger," said Ali Dabbagh, chairman of the Iraqi Election Network, a nonpartisan group staffed by volunteers from 154 civic groups.

"They are volunteers," Dabbagh said. "We were not even trying to recruit. It was just amazing."

Except for agents from political parties who may also be present at polling stations, the monitors will be virtually alone in assessing the conduct of the historic vote, heralded by the Bush administration as a clarion call for democracy in a Middle East dominated by monarchies and dictatorships.

Citing Iraq's profound insecurity, foreign countries and international organizations mustered only a single accredited observer, and she is expected to remain in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

"We are newcomers," Dabbagh said. "It's an enormous responsibility."

The day's attacks underscored the risk. A school expected to be used as a polling station was blown up by insurgents in Samarra, about 65 miles north of Baghdad, the Associated Press reported. Three Iraqi civilians were killed when a car bomb exploded in the same city, the news agency said.

Three more Iraqis were killed when a roadside bomb intended for a U.S. convoy detonated in northern Babil province, south of Baghdad, news services reported. The military said another car bomb killed an Iraqi soldier in Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad, and yet another car bomb wounded a U.S. soldier in Kirkuk, which borders the Arab and Kurdish reaches of northern Iraq.

The Marines offered no details on the death of the Marine, who was killed south of Baghdad. The Associated Press said the death resulted from a mortar strike.

Iraqi and American officials said they expect a sharp spike in attacks of all kinds during the immediate run-up to the balloting, as the perhaps 14 million Iraqis who are eligible to vote mull whether to risk a trip to the polls. One U.S. official in Baghdad said he expected the violence to continue after the ballot as well, whatever the perceived success of the election.

"I think the insurgency's going to continue," said the official, who declined to be identified further as a condition for providing reporters with his assessment of the situation. "In some places it could get worse, in the short term.

"Everyone needs to understand this is a long-term problem."