Iraq to shut borders during election

BAGHDAD - Iraq will shut its land borders and bar traffic from getting close to voting centres during the January 30 polls to try to thwart attacks.

A statement from Iraq's election commission said land borders would be closed and strict restrictions declared on all vehicle traffic from Jan. 29-31, a set of extraordinary measures aimed at preventing a bloodbath on election day.

Hours earlier, a suicide car bomber attacked a Baghdad office used by a major Shi'ite party in the latest insurgent attack apparently aimed at stoking sectarian strife.

Police said one person was killed and seven were wounded by the blast outside the office used by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

A leading SCIRI official said the dead man was one of the guards at the building. He said guards had opened fire at the suicide bomber's vehicle as it approached a checkpoint.

SCIRI's leader heads a list of mainly Shi'ite candidates expected to win strong support in the elections.

Officials said a candidate in the party list of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shi'ite who is fielding a separate slate, was killed in the city of Basra on Tuesday.

The polls have divided Iraq, with most of the 60 per cent Shi'ite majority insisting the vote goes ahead to cement their political dominance after decades of oppression under Saddam Hussein, while many Sunni Arabs say the election should be delayed because of widespread violence.

A raging insurgency in Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland means that many Sunnis who want to vote say they are too afraid to do so. Several leading Sunni Arab parties say they will boycott the polls because the results will not be fair.

Sunni Arabs dominated the ruling class under Saddam, but many now fear losing influence, and the insurgency in Iraq is dominated by Sunnis.

Last month, a suicide car bomb at the SCIRI headquarters in Baghdad killed several people, and nearly 70 were killed in twin suicide bombings in the Shi'ite holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala. Insurgents have also attacked representatives of Iraq's most revered Shi'ite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP SEIZED

In another sign of religious violence before the polls, the Iraqi Catholic archbishop of Mosul was seized at gunpoint on Monday in what the Vatican called an act of terrorism.

Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa, 66, is the most prominent member of Iraq's minority Christian community to be swept up in the country's violence.

"The Holy See deplores this act of terrorism in the firmest manner and demands that the worthy pastor is swiftly freed unharmed to continue to carry out his ministry," Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls told Reuters.

The Italian missionary agency Misna said on Tuesday a $200,000 ransom had been demanded by the archbishop's captors.

Besides attacks on Shi'ites, insurgents have mounted a relentless campaign of suicide car bombings and ambushes against Iraq's beleaguered security forces, who are supposed to provide security for the elections but are struggling just to protect themselves.

Election centres, many of them in schools around the country, have also come under repeated attack.

On Monday, a suicide car bomb exploded at the police headquarters in the oil refining town of Baiji north of Baghdad, killing at least 10 people and wounding at least 20.

Near Baquba, another guerrilla stronghold northeast of the capital, gunmen opened fire at a checkpoint on Monday and killed eight soldiers, a National Guard officer said.

Gunmen also attacked police stations in Sharqat, 160 miles north of Baghdad, and Dour, a Sunni village near Saddam's home town in Tikrit. Two policemen were killed and four injured in the two attacks.

The US military said three soldiers assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force were killed in western Iraq on Monday, but gave no further details. The military did not say whether the deaths were connected to a suicide bomb attack on a US patrol in the restive city of Ramadi on Monday.

- REUTERS