BAGHDAD, Jan. 11 -- Attacks by insurgents across Iraq killed 19 people Tuesday, including six police officers in the northern city of Tikrit and seven travelers just south of Baghdad.
As violence continued, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said the lack of security in some parts of the country could prevent voters from participating in elections scheduled for Jan. 30. "Certainly, there will be some pockets that will not be able to participate in the elections for these reasons, but we think that it will not be widespread," Allawi said at a news conference.
Iraqi police survey the scene of a Monday night car bombing in Basra, in southern Iraq. Five policemen were wounded.
(Nabil Jurani -- AP)
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In a speech to Iraqi police in Baghdad, however, Allawi stressed that the security situation was improving. "We don't say we have completely succeeded to maintain security in Iraq," he said. "We say there are notable achievements in chasing the criminals."
Allawi said Iraqi security forces were playing an important role in stopping violence.
"There is improvement in the security situation," he said. "But regretfully, there are still problems . . . and there is insistence from enemy powers who want to hurt Iraq. We are committed to building up the Iraqi security forces and our military forces as soon as possible."
Insurgents have stepped up attacks on Iraqi and American security forces in the run-up to the elections, a period that Iraqi and U.S. officials have warned could be particularly violent.
In Tikrit, the home town of toppled president Saddam Hussein, insurgents attacked with car bombs and rockets in three separate incidents, witnesses said. The six officers were killed when a car bomb exploded in front of a headquarters building as a police convoy passed by about 8:55 a.m.
In a second attack, insurgents fired rockets at a traffic police command post next door. One of the police officers, Muhsin Hussein, said rockets fell in front of the command post just moments after the car bomb blast. "One exploded in an open yard, and the other one fell at the gate but did not explode," he said.
The third attack, which also involved rockets, took place in Tikrit's Celebration Park as a brigade of National Guardsmen was gathering. No one was hurt.
In the volatile northern city of Samarra, a roadside bomb killed two National Guardsmen in a U.S.-Iraqi convoy, police said. A second bomb killed a policeman, and a third killed two more guardsmen, the Reuters news agency reported.
South of Baghdad, meanwhile, assailants killed at least seven people in a minibus, according to police and hospital sources. The victims were traveling in Yusufiyah, 10 miles south of Baghdad, when the attack occurred, said the director of the town's hospital, Dawoud Taie, according to the Associated Press.
A U.S. Marine was killed in volatile Anbar province, west of Baghdad, the Marines said in a statement. No other details were released.
Police in Tikrit said officers on Monday night unwittingly encountered the man who placed the bomb that detonated there Tuesday morning. When the man parked his car in front of police headquarters, "we went to him and asked him why he was parking his car here," said Mohammed Subhi, 19, a warrant officer. "He said that his car broke down, and he was going to Baiji."
Subhi said the man had a red-and-white scarf covering his face, revealing only his eyes and nose. But, the officer said, "we did not suspect him because it was very cold, and it is something normal that the people at night wear these kinds of scarves."
When police again spotted the car -- described as a white Chevrolet Malibu -- on Tuesday morning and could not find the driver, they summoned an ordnance team. But the bomb exploded before the team arrived, Subhi said.
Abu Ahmed Sayer, 29, a witness, said the bomb went off as four police pickup trucks, each carrying seven officers, drove by. "When the convoy passed by the car, the car blew up," he said. "I was standing in front of the main gate of the command, and I saw a very huge explosion and huge fire."
Meanwhile on Tuesday, Iraqi officials said election commission workers in Anbar province who resigned over the weekend were replaced.
At a news conference Monday, Allawi disputed an account in The Washington Post that the 13-member commission had resigned because of threats from insurgents.
But Khalid Qaraghulli, a spokesman for the province, confirmed that the commission had resigned. Qaraghulli said the head of the commission had been threatened with death if he didn't quit.
Special correspondents Omar Fekeiki and Sahar Nageeb in Baghdad and Salih Saif Aldin in Tikrit contributed to this report.
