Polling station blasts mar early voting in Iraq election (2nd Roundup)

Mar 4, 2010, 15:52 GMT

Baghdad - At least 12 people were killed and 33 injured Thursday, as early voting started in Iraq's parliamentary polls amid allegations of police intimidation and problems with voting lists.

The polls, Iraq's third nationwide elections since the 2003 US-led invasion of the country, are being watched carefully as a key test of the country's stability ahead of US forces' withdrawal.

Some 950,000 Iraqi soldiers, police, hospital patients and workers, and prisoners serving fewer than five years in prison were expected to cast their votes on Thursday. General voting is scheduled to begin on Sunday.

Five people were killed and 10 injured in a rocket-propelled grenade attack near a polling station in al-Horreya area of northwestern Baghdad, police told the German Press Agency dpa.

Earlier, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives belt near another polling station in Bab al-Moazzam area in central Baghdad, killing seven people and injuring 17 more, according to police.

In the northern city of Mosul, nine people were injured when unidentified gunmen detonated a bomb by a candidate's house, police said.

Sheikh Nawaf Saud Zayd's house was located in the western Mosul neighbourhood of al-Yarmouk.

'There was no one home when the blast took place,' a police source told dpa. 'The injured people are the sheikh's neighbours.'

Seven more members of Iraq's security forces were injured in two rocket attacks in Mosul as the day's voting in the city drew to a close, police told dpa.

The violence came amid allegations from the head of Iraq's electoral commission in the city that security forces in Mosul were urging voters to cast their ballots for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

'A group of federal police (arriving from Baghdad) have tried to block voters from reaching the People's Union centre in the Wadi Hajar area,' Abdel-Khaleq al-Dabagh told dpa.

'They also urged voters to vote for al-Maliki,' he said.

Some among those eligible to vote on Thursday found they could not because their names were not on the voter-registration lists.

Most prominent among them was the chief of security in Baghdad, Qassim Atta, who said that he tried to vote in the morning, but did not find his name on the voter-registration lists. Atta called on the Independent High Electoral Commission to intervene.

Elsewhere, voting went more smoothly.

'I voted early this morning with my colleagues before we began our duty to secure a polling station in (Baghdad's) al-Karada area,' Ali Hassan, a 25-year-old policeman, told dpa.

'Groups of security members went to the different polling stations according to a previously set schedule,' Hassan said.

The Iraqi government has announced a 5-day holiday starting Thursday and a curfew on vehicles to ease and secure the voting process.

There has been a spike in violence across the country in the weeks ahead of the vote.

Meanwhile, police said they had arrested 'a number' of suspects in connection with the Wednesday triple bombing in Baquba, some 60 kilometres north of Baghdad, that left at least 33 dead and 58 injured.