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Qaeda ally declares all-out war on Iraqi election
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-01-24 10:01
Al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi declared all-out war on Sunday on Iraq's
landmark elections in a warning intended to scare away voters a week before they
go to the polls amid a raging insurgency.
A huge poster
showing the image of al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and
a burning car with a caption that reads: 'This what Zarqawi is doing in
Iraq for our beloved ones now and in the future,' is seen in one of
Baghdad's streets. [AFP] |
But interim Prime
Minister Iyad Allawi vowed his U.S.-backed government would do everything
possible to safeguard more than 5,000 voting stations against what he called
"evil forces determined to hurt Iraq."
Zarqawi, a shadowy Jordanian militant who tops America's wanted list in Iraq,
berated the country's Shi'ite majority for embracing the election and urged
Saddam Hussein's once-dominant Sunni minority to wage what he termed a holy
fight against it.
"We have declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy and all
those who seek to enact it," a speaker identified as Zarqawi said in an audio
tape on the Internet.
"Those who vote ... are infidels. And with God as my witness, I have informed
them (of our intentions)," he said.
Zarqawi's network has assassinated politicians and beheaded foreign hostages.
Despite a $25 million U.S. bounty on his head, he has eluded a U.S.-led manhunt.
BLOODBATH FEARS
His group's almost daily attacks -- including most of the deadliest suicide
bombings of the past year -- have raised fears of a bloodbath during next
Sunday's election, Iraq's first since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion that
toppled Saddam.
Iraqi officials say Sunni guerrillas are not only trying to wreck the
election, which is expected to cement the new-found power of the long-oppressed
60 percent Shi'ite majority, but also want to provoke sectarian civil war.
In the latest attack, a security guard was killed when a bomb blew up an
election office in a lawless region south of Baghdad known as the "Triangle of
Death," police said.
The U.S. military said one of its soldiers was killed by small arms fire in
the northern city of Mosul on Saturday, bringing to 1,080 the number of U.S.
troops killed in action in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.
"We are determined to do our best to put an end to the escalation of
violence," Allawi told the BBC, adding it was premature to talk about U.S.-led
forces withdrawing until Iraq's fledgling security services were fully trained
and combat ready.
Many Sunni leaders have called for an election boycott, saying insurgent
attacks in the Sunni heartland would prevent voting and skew the outcome in
favor of the Shi'ites.
A low turnout by Sunnis, who had held sway in Iraqi politics since the 1920s,
would undermine the election's credibility.
Electoral Commission official Saeed al-Battat said he was confident of a big
turnout in the southern Sh'ite city of Basra.
"The security situation in Basra compared with other areas in Iraq is ideal,
I would say," he said.
Militants have kidnapped more than 120 foreigners over the last year, killing
about a third of them.
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