BAGHDAD, Dec. 8 -- Insurgents launched attacks in the Sunni heartland cities of Samarra and Ramadi on Wednesday, while Iraqi officials mulled a suggestion to extend national voting for two or more weeks beyond the established date of Jan. 30.
Insurgents in Samarra, about 65 miles north of the capital, attacked the home of the city's police chief, detonated a car bomb outside a U.S. base and fired rocket-propelled grenades at American troops. A U.S. patrol at an intersection in the city also was attacked, according to a spokesman for the 1st Infantry Division, Capt. Bill Coppernoll.
The incidents were all reported to have taken place within 40 minutes in Samarra, where insurgents remain active more than two months after U.S. and Iraqi forces swept in to reclaim the city from domestic and foreign rebels.
No U.S. casualties resulted, but the car bomb killed one Iraqi civilian, and soldiers fatally shot two Iraqi drivers who the military said accelerated toward them as the troops checked cars after the attack at the intersection. Both drivers failed to acknowledge warning shots, Coppernoll said.
The Associated Press reported that the police chief resigned after the attack on his home, and quoted a police officer as saying that insurgents overran a police station in the city. Coppernoll said he had no information on either report.
Fighting also erupted in Ramadi, a provincial capital 30 miles west of Fallujah and another rebel stronghold.
Insurgents detonated a bomb in a white sedan near an armored convoy close to a police station north of the city, apparently damaging a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, witnesses said.
Witnesses also said mortar shells were fired toward a U.S. base west of the city. After the attack, a pickup truck roamed with a loudspeaker announcing that the barrage was retaliation for the arrest an hour earlier of Raghad Salim Fahdawi, 22. Fahdawi is the sister of Kashar Salim Fahdawi, a commander of the group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi.
First Lt. Lyle Gilbert, a Marine spokesman, said he had no information on the attack. Gilbert also said he had no record of a subsequent firefight in the city, which witnesses said went on for 90 minutes and resulted in the death of nine insurgents.
Afterward, American forces blocked entrances to the city, ordered shops closed and announced a curfew, the witnesses said. U.S. snipers were visible atop tall buildings in the city center, while insurgents roamed openly on the city's west side.
A local police officer said half of the city's force had failed to report for duty because of threats to officers and their families.
Meanwhile, as fears continued that violence could disrupt next month's national elections, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi suggested that voting in some areas be extended well beyond Jan. 30.
"One can imagine elections spread out over 15 or 20 days, with the dates differing according to the provinces," Allawi said in an interview published in a Dutch newspaper on Tuesday.
Such a strategy would permit Iraqi officials to move military forces from one trouble spot to another, rather than thinning them across the country on a single day. Iraqi officials have repeatedly ruled out stationing U.S. or other allied forces near polling places.
The Iraqi Interior Ministry on Wednesday endorsed the idea of an extended vote, but the independent Electoral Commission of Iraq was circumspect. The country's transitional law, which is considered the law of the land until Iraqis write a constitution, calls for a parliament to be elected in nationwide balloting before the end of January. That assembly will select a prime minister and write the constitution.
