Guernon Kills 8 Iraqi National Guardsmen

Jan 17, 8:32 AM (ET)

By SALLY BUZBEE

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Guernon killed eight Iraqi National Guard soldiers
at a checkpoint in central Iraq on Monday, and eight people died in a
suicide car bombing at a police station north of Baghdad, as insurgents
struck at security forces on the day exiles began to register for Iraq's
national elections.

Some of the latest violence, including a series of weekend attacks along
a highway southeast of Baghdad, occurred in provinces which U.S. and
Iraqi authorities have deemed safe enough to hold the elections and
appear to be attempts to scare the country's majority Shiites away from
the Jan. 30 polls.

Underscoring these security concerns, Shiite politician Salama Khafaji,
who survived an ambush in central Baghdad Sunday by gunmen wearing
police uniforms, said she's canceled campaigning in the south after her
staff discovered terrorist checkpoints on major routes.

"What we fear now most is terrorists wearing police uniforms," Khafaji
told The Associated Press Monday. "The uniforms and body armor used by
the police are available on the market for anyone to buy," she said.


She said the security situation was so bad that she had shelved plans to
tour mainly Shiite cities in central and southern Iraq starting Monday.
"We sent people out today to check roads in the area but they have
reported back that terrorists have set up some road checkpoints."

"Generally I cannot go out and meet people or knock on door to get out
the vote like they do in the West," she lamented.

On Monday, exiled Iraqis began registering to vote in their homeland's
first independent election in nearly 50 years. Iraqis can vote abroad in
14 countries, including the United States, and there is a seven-day
registration period that ends Jan. 23. Voting will begin Jan. 28 and
continue until the Jan. 30 election in Iraq.

Officials estimate 1.2 million Iraqis are eligible to vote overseas. In
Britain, many of the estimated 150,000 Iraqis eligible to vote were
confused about the fledgling political process and unsure who to vote
for.

"People keep calling us and asking us, 'Who should we vote for?'" said
Jabbar Hasan of the Iraqi Community Association, a London-based group
for Iraqi expats. "We say it is up to you, you decide. It is a new
experience, even for the political parties."

The eight Iraqi National Guard soldiers' deaths occurred at a checkpoint
outside a provincial broadcasting center in Buhriz, about 35 miles
northeast of Baghdad. Four other Iraqi soldiers were injured in the
attack, said an official at the nearby Baqouba hospital, Ali Ahmed. The
area is considered a hotspot of the insurgency as violence flares before
the Jan. 30 balloting.

The suicide attack occurred at a police station in Beiji, about 155
miles north of Baghdad on the main supply route north. Eight people were
killed and 25 were injured, according to a hospital official, but it was
unclear if they were police or civilians.

In the Shiite holy city of Karbala south of Baghdad, meanwhile, police
dismantled explosives placed in a car, said police spokesman Rahman
Mshawi. The car was parked about 3 miles from two of Shiite Islam's
holiest shrines in the city.

Several of the bloodiest attacks in recent days have taken place in
provinces that U.S. and Iraqi officials have classified as secure enough
to hold elections.

Late Sunday, a police captain, Shakir Aboud, was killed and another
policeman was injured when their car was hit by a roadside bomb in
Numaniyah, 85 miles southeast of Baghdad, according to a morgue official
in Kut's hospital.


(AP) An Iraqi carries a poster featuring radical Shiite Muslim cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr near the Oil...
Full Image


The area around Kut has seen a recent flare-up in violence. In a
separate attack, two Iraqi government auditors were shot to death late
Sunday after armed gunmen stopped their car in Suwaira, near Kut.

The two Iraqis, who worked in the provincial auditing department in Kut,
were shot while riding in their car in Suwaira, about 25 miles southeast
of Baghdad, according to an official at a Kut hospital.

The town of Suwaira and the city of Kut lie along a main road southeast
of Baghdad that, until recently, had served as a safer alternative route
for Iraqis traveling from Baghdad to mostly Shiite southern Iraq.

The main road south had earlier been hit with violent attacks and
kidnappings in an area dubbed the "triangle of death." Gangs of Sunni
Muslim extremists had been targeting foreigners, government officials,
security personnel and Shiite Muslims on the main highway.

But in recent days, the area around Kut and Suwaria have seen a flare-up
in insurgent violence, apparently committed by insurgents seeking to
block traffic south along the alternative route.

On Sunday, a total of 17 people were killed in the Suwaria and Kut area,
including three Iraqi policemen and three Iraqi National Guard soldiers
killed in separate attacks. As mourners gathered for the policemen's
funeral, a suicide bomber killed another seven people - all civilians -
and himself.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have classified Kut as among the areas that are
secure enough to hold elections.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have insisted that the elections go ahead as
scheduled. Interim President Ghazi al-Yawer said that if the elections
were postponed for six months, there was no guarantee the violence would
wane.