Suspects detained after holy city attacks

BAGHDAD - Police rounded up dozens of suspects on Monday after twin suicide car bombings killed 66 people in Iraq's Shi'ite holy cities, attacks that intensified fears of widespread violence during elections on January 30.

Preparing for the poll, officials staged a lottery to choose the order for parties and blocs to appear on the ballot paper, holding the event in a closely guarded building that was once part of Saddam Hussein's palace complex.

In Najaf, scene of the deadlier of Sunday's co-ordinated attacks, the governor said police had seized 50 suspects. Police detained five more in Kerbala, site of the other blast, but were cautious about saying they were close to the culprits.

Najaf governor Adnan al-Zurfi, appointed by US authorities, gave reporters few details about those in custody, but said at least one held a passport from another Arab country.

The streets of Najaf were almost empty on Monday apart from frequent funeral processions, some passing close to where people continued to sift through the rubble of Sunday's blast.

The attacks in the cities, both sacred to Iraq's 60-per cent Shi'ite Muslim majority, came six weeks before the election and appeared designed to provoke sectarian conflict.

Shi'ites, oppressed for decades under Saddam and before, are widely expected to top the poll at the expense of Saddam's long-dominant Sunni minority.

In another attack on Sunday that sent an obvious message to the Electoral Commission and potential voters, gunmen shot dead three Commission employees in a daylight ambush in Baghdad.

Electoral Commission officials and candidates gathering to choose the ballot order on Monday held a minute's silence to remember those killed in the three attacks.

As they met, gunmen in the north shot dead two members of a party set up by a former intelligence chief who turned against Saddam.

Iraq's Shi'ite leaders, anxious for the election to go ahead on time and convert their sect's numerical superiority into political clout, urged their followers to remain calm.

"We strongly condemn the attacks," Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who heads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and tops the list for the most powerful Shi'ite electoral bloc.

"The aim is to sow sectarian division and defer the election process... Iraqis will defeat those aims."

Sunni leaders and clerics echoed that call, denouncing the bombings as the work of extremists who had no role in Iraq.

The attacks have raised fears the country is edging towards civil war, but many Iraqis play down the possibility, saying the Sunni and Shi'ite communities have generally co-existed at peace in Iraq for centuries.

"A civil war will be hell. The consensus is against revenge," said Ali al-Yassiri, political liaison officer for militant young Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has led two uprisings against US forces this year.

Monday's ceremony in Baghdad to choose the order in which parties and blocs appear on the ballot was attended by more than 200 people clearly eager for the election. Polls show that around 80 per cent of Iraqis would like to vote.

But doubts remain over what will happen on election day, particularly in predominantly Sunni areas, where most of the violence has been concentrated in recent months.

Still, 7000 candidates are signed up to stand in the poll and some 6000 voting stations, protected by local security forces and manned by Iraqi monitors, will be set up nationwide.

Reinforced US units are on hand, but hope to stay in the background to avoid appearances of an American-run election.

The vote is for a 275-seat national assembly that will help form a government and write a permanent constitution before another election is held in December 2005.

- REUTERS