BAGHDAD, 12 January 2005 — Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi admitted yesterday that some parts of the country would not be able to take part in elections on Jan. 30 as deadly strikes killed at least 20 people, six of them in a car bombing in Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit.
“There are some pockets that will not participate in the election but they are not large,” Allawi told reporters.
The US-backed premier vowed to spend $2.2 billion this year to bolster the security forces now fighting a bloody insurgency in central Iraq that has cost thousands of lives.
“When our forces are capable of taking over the war against the insurgents, we will be able to begin discussions with the multinational forces on the Iraq Army taking over the lead role in maintaining security in Iraqi towns,” he said.
The insurgency has been fanned by widespread concerns among the Sunni elite, which dominated Saddam’s regime and all previous Iraqi governments, that the new Parliament will be dominated by the long oppressed Shiite majority.
Allawi said the insurgency had cost Iraq more than $10 billion in sabotage against oil and power infrastructure alone.
In the latest assaults on Iraq’s oil distribution network, two pipelines near the northern oil center of Kirkuk were set ablaze, officials said.
As the clock ticked down to polling day, sectarian tensions entered the campaign with the prime minister’s Iraqi National Accord party crying foul over the alleged use of religion by Shiite politicians.
The INA lodged a formal complaint against the Shiite joint list, the Unified Iraqi Alliance (UIA), for violating state law by using religion in its advertising.
The party also accused Shiite militias of intimidating voters ahead of the poll.
Yesterday’s bombing in Tikrit targeted a police station and came a day after Baghdad’s deputy police chief was assassinated.
All of the casualties were police, the US military said.
Militants loyal to Iraq’s most wanted man, Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi, said they carried out the bombing, in an Internet statement.
In the Sunni belt immediately south of the capital, dubbed the triangle of death because of the frequency of rebel attacks, three Iraqi civilians were killed and three wounded in a roadside bombing near Yussufiyah, witnesses and a hospital source said.
The bombing apparently targeted a US military convoy but the casualties were on a passing minibus.
North of Baghdad, five Iraqi soldiers and a civilian were killed in two separate attacks in the city of Samarra, recaptured from insurgents in a US-led assault in October, police said.
An Iraqi translator for the Americans was shot dead near the main northern city of Mosul, while two police officers were killed by gunmen in the capital, police said.
Further west, two Iraqi civilians were killed by mortar fire near the notorious US-run Abu Ghraib prison, the military said.
Two members of the prime minister’s party were killed in the space of 24 hours, bringing the number of INA supporters killed in the past two months to 22.
US President George W. Bush, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, said he was working to ensure the elections go ahead as planned on Jan. 30, but warned the vote was only a “first step” toward a permanent government.
— With input from agencies
