BAGHDAD, 5 February 2005 — Gunmen kidnapped an Italian woman journalist near a Baghdad mosque yesterday as the main Shiite alliance made a strong showing in Sunday’s national elections.

Giuliana Sgrena, 56, the Middle East correspondent for the leftist Il Manifesto daily, was abducted almost exactly a month after French journalist Florence Aubenas also disappeared in Baghdad, feared kidnapped. Sgrena was snatched in the early afternoon near Baghdad University. “Men driving in a minibus blocked her car. They left an Iraqi journalist and the Iraqi driver who were with her, and took her away,” a Baghdad Interior Ministry official said.

Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu pledged Rome’s commitment “to do everything possible to secure her release.”

A little-known group, the Islamic Jihad Organization, claimed the abduction and set a 72 hour deadline for Italy to remove its troops from Iraq, but did not make a specific threat to kill her.

In other violence, two US soldiers were killed and eight wounded by roadside bombs in northern Iraq, and an Iraqi contractor working with the American military was gunned down in a drive-by shooting west of the capital.

The country’s main Shiite coalition maintained a big lead in the vote count for the historic election. The United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) had more than two-thirds of the 3.3 million votes counted so far. The rival list headed by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi came in second place with 17 percent, the election commission said.

A total turnout figure has not yet been released, but the commission estimates that about eight million people voted.

The UIA, which has been blessed by Shiite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani is expected to form the biggest bloc in the new 275-member National Assembly.

But the results announced so far do not take account of northern provinces, which will bolster the vote for Kurdish and Sunni parties.

The election commission said the UIA had won 2,212,749 votes of those counted so far. That gave the Sistani list 67 percent of the vote and a commanding, although slightly reduced lead over Allawi’s list, which won 579,708 votes.

The latest results came from 10 provinces which account for about 35 percent of the country’s polling stations.

Meanwhile, rebel Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr and Sunni religious leaders urged all political forces in Iraq to press for an end to the US-led troop presence. At the grand mosque in Kufa, Sadr sent an envoy to read a message to thousands of worshippers at Friday prayers.

“I call on all religious and political powers that pushed toward the elections and took part in them to issue an official statement calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of the occupation forces from Iraq,” Sayed Hashim Abu Ragheef told the gathering.

At the Umm Al-Qura Mosque in Baghdad, headquarters of the Sunni Committee of Muslim Scholars, worshippers were told that the new government must help to “draft a constitution according to Islamic laws.”

— Additional input from agencies