Explosions rock Baghdad as Iraqis go to polls

A wave of bombings and mortar attacks have killed 25 people in Baghdad as insurgents bid to disrupt Iraq's second general election since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. At least 14 people died in north-eastern Baghdad when an explosion leveled a building, and mortar attacks in western neighbourhoods of the capital killed seven people, police and hospital officials said. In Mahmoudiya, 20 miles (30km) south of Baghdad, a bomb inside a polling stationkilled a policeman, said the Iraqi army's Colonel Abdul Hussein. There were also explosions elsewhere in the country, but no reports of further fatalities. Insurgents launched mortars toward the Green Zone, home to the US embassy and the prime minister's office. In the Sunni stronghold of Azamiyah, police reported at least 20 mortar attacks since dawn. In Azamiyah, Walid Abid, a 40-year-old father of two, said the violence would not deter him from going to vote. "I am not scared and I am not going to stay put at home," he said. "Until when? We need to change things. If I stay home and not come to vote, Azamiyah will get worse." In Hurriyah, a Shia neighborhood in north-western Baghdad, loudspeakers in mosques exhorted people to turn out to vote like "arrows to the enemy's chest". About 19 million Iraqis are registered to vote. There are more than 6,200 candidates competing for 325 seats in the new parliament, Iraq's second for a full term since the US-led invasion seven years ago this month. The poll is seen as a test of Iraq's progress in the 51 months since the disastrous general election of 2005, and its capacity to stand alone afterwards – during what is expected to be a power vacuum caused by the rapid withdrawal of all remaining US combat troops. The pullout will be ordered within weeks, if the ballot is deemed to be credible. Attitudes in Iraq to the poll during a fortnight of campaigning have been mixed. Memories remain vivid of the 2005 election – which heralded three years of violence, largely because of a Sunni boycott that led the already disenfranchised minority to lose further status in post-Saddam Iraq. In Salahuddin province, where the executed dictator is buried, Sunni residents seem almost resentful about voting, but resigned to turning up at polling stations to try and reclaim lost political ground. "The people here are looking to improve their situation," said Mutather Alwan, the governor of Salahuddin. "This government has done nothing for them, so we will turn out in numbers to restore our rights. People are now far more knowledgable than they were in 2005." Across the Sunni heartland, there has been little sign of a much-predicted Baathist grab for power – despite constant warnings from Ahmed Chalabi, the former US ally, and Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, in particular. "Security is under control here," said police Lieutenant Shihad Kamel in Tikrit. "We haven't seen any sign of the Ba'athists at all." The secular Iraqiya electoral list of Iyad Allawi – a former interim prime minister and post-war favourite of Britain – is likely to poll well. It will probably feature in post-election horse-trading to nominate a prime minister. Maliki is also polling well but to stay in power would almost certainly have to form a coalition with either Allawi or a rival conservative and largely Shia grouping headed by a young cleric, Aamer Hakim.