BAGHDAD, Feb. 3 -- As officials released partial returns on Thursday from Sunday's elections, insurgents shattered a brief period of calm with attacks across Iraq that killed at least 28 people in a 36-hour period.
On a road near the northern city of Kirkuk, insurgents stopped a convoy of Iraqi army recruits Wednesday night, forced a dozen of them to lie on the road and shot them in the head. The attackers then ran over the soldiers with an automobile, said Salih Sabawi, a local farmer who said he ran to the scene after hearing gunfire.
An Iraqi girl is bandaged by a U.S. soldier after a car bomb targeting an Army convoy exploded, slightly injuring two soldiers and six children in a nearby house in Mosul.
(Jim Macmillan -- AP)
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Two U.S. Marines died Thursday in separate incidents in Anbar province, and insurgents staged an ambush on a road south of Baghdad, killing two policemen, wounding 14 and leaving at least 16 missing, the Associated Press reported.
In the first official returns from Sunday's vote for a new Iraqi National Assembly, the United Iraqi Alliance, a slate endorsed by the country's top Shiite Muslim leader, showed strong support -- as expected -- in predominantly Shiite regions. A list of candidates headed by interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi was running second.
The tallies released by the Independent Electoral Commission reflected about 1.6 million votes cast in the southern provinces of Dhi Qar, Karbala, Muthanna, Najaf and Qadisiya, as well as parts of Baghdad. Election officials cautioned that the partial count -- taken from 10 percent of Iraq's 5,000 voting centers -- did not constitute a representative sample of the entire electorate.
"Don't be hasty in considering that this 1.6 million can represent the full result," said Safwat Rashid, an electoral commissioner. He said it might take the commission 10 days to release a complete count.
Overall, the slate aligned with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's preeminent Shiite leader, garnered just under 72 percent of the votes counted; Allawi's list claimed 18 percent. Parties and lists led by Sunni Muslims appeared to have fared poorly.
The Shiite alliance drew more than 75 percent of the vote in four of the southern provinces counted. In Baghdad, where returns from a quarter of the polling places were counted, the alliance drew nearly 62 percent, while Allawi's list had 25 percent.
The commission also released complete results for the more than 168,000 votes cast by Iraqis in Australia, Britain, France, Iran, Jordan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and the United States. The Shiite-endorsed alliance was the leading vote-getter in four of the countries, including the United States.
As political factions jockeyed among themselves, seeking possible alliances in the assembly, ethnic Kurdish leaders designated Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, as their candidate for president or prime minister -- two posts that are to be filled by the assembly.
"We will not accept other than that," said Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Talabani's longtime rival. The Kurdistan Alliance, which includes the two parties, is expected to place second or third when final assembly results are tallied.
Responding to growing complaints about voting irregularities, election officials said they had been caught off guard by Iraqis' desire to vote in some areas where security officials had predicted fear of violence would keep people from the polls.
Rashid said that the commission had planned to open about 330 polling centers in restive Nineveh province but that security forces advised the number be cut to 90. "Because of security reasons, we didn't think so many people would participate. But Iraqi voters were courageous enough to participate," he said.
Insurgent attacks on Thursday killed at least a dozen Iraqi civilians, according to the Associated Press.
Gunmen in Baqubah, in north-central Iraq, killed two Iraqis who worked with U.S. forces and injured four. Near Balad, north of Baghdad, guerrillas shot dead two civilians. Police said the two were killed because they had voted, according to the Reuters news agency.
Following the attack outside Kirkuk on Wednesday evening that killed 12, relatives of the dead recruits vowed revenge. "I lost three of my sons in this cowardly act, and I will not make a funeral for them until I reach the killers and kill them," said Mohammed Abdullah Jubouri, 55.
The recruits were returning home from guard duty at oil and gas pipelines, which insurgents often attack. Television footage of the scene showed that mourners had wrapped one of the bodies in an Iraqi flag.
[On Friday, the U.S. military said an American soldier attached to a Marine unit had been killed Thursday south of Baghdad in Babil province, according to the Reuters news agency. No other details were given.]
Correspondent Doug Struck in Baghdad and special correspondents Marwan Anie in Kirkuk and Hasan Shammari in Baqubah contributed to this report.
