Enlarge imageBy Andrew Quinn and Mariam Karouny
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A car bomb killed at least 25 people in a small Shi’ite town northeast of Baghdad on Saturday, casting a shadow over political jockeying in the capital where parties finalised their alliances ahead of December 15 polls.
The blast came the day after a deadline for parties to register for elections that Washington is hoping will set Iraq firmly on the path to peace and democracy, two and a half years after the U.S.-led invasion.
Police and the interior ministry said at least 25 people were killed and 40 wounded in the blast in the Shi’ite town of Howaider, north of the provincial capital Baquba which is 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad.
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Police sources said the bomb was in a pick-up truck which exploded on the small town’s main street where the mosque, the market and a coffee shop are located. The blast hit around sundown when people would have been breaking the Ramadan fast.
Shi’ite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish blocs were among more than 200 parties and coalitions that completed registration for the election, which Washington hopes will cement Iraqi democracy and open the way for an eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Election officials said on Saturday that 21 coalitions and 230 political parties and entities registered for the December election by Friday’s deadline, including a significant number of Sunni Arab groups who boycotted the last election in January.
Five groups are likely to dominate the race: the Shi’ite Islamist Alliance, the Kurdish bloc, at least two blocs of Sunni Arab parties and a secular coalition unveiled on Saturday by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
Washington hopes the participation of Sunni parties will bring more Sunnis into the political fold, although it remains unclear how much sway Sunni party leaders have over militants fighting the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad.
COMPLICATED BALLOTS
Under a new system of proportional representation, voters in Iraq’s 18 provinces will see 18 different ballot papers.
"We are giving the voter a chance to elect people they know so that people will get more involved in the candidate’s programme for his province," Hussein Hindawi, the head of Iraq’s election commission, told Reuters.
Allawi, a secular Shi’ite, unveiled a slate on Saturday that included prominent Sunnis such as Vice-President Ghazi al-Yawar, parliamentary speaker Hajem al-Hassani and Adnan Pachachi.
"The first priority of our list is the national unity of Iraq, which is the most important issue for the future," Allawi said on Saturday. "The second priority is securing, in deeds not words, public services and security for the people."
While many observers expect the December election to be contested along ethnic and sectarian lines, growing dissatisfaction with service delivery by the current Shi’ite- and Kurdish-led government may also play an important role.
The most prominent Shi’ite faction, the United Alliance led by Shi’ite Islamist parties, took more than half the 275 seats in parliament in the January election.
While it has largely reformed to contest the December election, the United Alliance has lost several components, including the Iraqi National Congress led by Ahmed Chalabi, a controversial politician who fell out of favour with Washington.
After a week which saw the United States mark the 2,000th U.S. military fatality in Iraq, U.S. forces announced the deaths of three more soldiers -- two killed by a roadside bomb in south Baghdad and a third by a landmine in Baiji, 180 km (110 miles) north of the capital.
The attacks brought the total American death toll since the U.S.-led invasion to at least 2,013.
Militants staged a dramatic attack last Monday, sending explosives-laden vehicles ramming into the perimeter walls of Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel, the base for several Western media organisations in the city.
The strike was televised around the world and killed at least 15 people. But the U.S. military said on Saturday that more deaths had been averted by the actions of a U.S. soldier who shot dead the driver of the last truck before it could detonate closer to the building.
A military news release said the bomb attack was coordinated with small-arms fire and possible rocket-propelled grenade attacks from accomplices, although it played down suggestions that insurgents wanted to kidnap foreign journalists.
"I don’t think capturing journalists was the goal," it quoted Capt. John Newman as saying. "They were just trying to cause death and destruction, and get on the news."
(Additional reporting by Fares Mahdawi in Baquba and Claudia Parsons, Azeel Kami and Ahmed Rashid in Baghdad)
