Blasts and deaths mar start of voting

Blasts and deaths marked the start of voting in Iraq today. One report said about twenty people had been killed within hours of polling stations opening.

Blasts and deaths marked the start of voting in Iraq today. One report said about twenty people had been killed within hours of polling stations opening.

Casting his vote, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi called it "the first time the Iraqis will determine their destiny."

The head of the main Shiite cleric-endorsed ticket, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, told reporters: "God willing, the elections will be good ... Today's voting is very important."

And the country's mostly ceremonial president, Ghazi al-Yawer, said the day was Iraq's first step "toward joining the free world."

Despite the heavy attacks and deaths, turnout was brisk in some Shiite Muslim and mixed Shiite-Sunni neighbourhoods, both in Baghdad and in southern cities like Basra.

But the polls were deserted in heavily Sunni cities like Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra west and north of Baghdad. In restive Mosul in the north, American troops and Iraqi soldiers roamed the streets, using loudspeakers to announce the locations of polling sites and urge people to vote. But streets were deserted.

In the heavily Sunni town of Mahmoudiya in the so-called "triangle of death" south of Baghdad, the only cars on the streets were ambulances. Through loudspeakers, they called people to vote, saying: "It is a national duty."

In the most deadly attack, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a polling station in western Baghdad, killing himself and four other people, three of them policemen, officials said.

Witness Faleh Hussein said the bomber approached a line of voters and detonated an explosives belt. Six people were also injured.

In another attack, three people were killed when mortars landed near a polling station in Sadr City, the heart of Baghdad's Shiite Muslim community. Seven to eight others were wounded, police said.

In addition, two people were killed and three others wounded when a mortar round missed a school serving as a polling center and hit a nearby home in the south-western Baghdad neighborhood of Amel, said police Capt. Mohammed Taha.

And another suicide bomber attacked a polling center in a western part of Baghdad, killing one policeman and wounding several others, police said. And another policeman was killed in a mortar attack on a polling station in Khan al-Mahawil, about 40 miles south of Baghdad.

The heavy explosions and dozens of mortar attacks broke out across Baghdad, and in several other cities including Baquoba, Basra, Mosul and Samarra, about 8:30 a.m., less than two hours after voting began.

Despite the attacks, there was brisk turnout in the poor Shiite community of Jisr Diyala in eastern Baghdad, with the number of voters increasing as the morning wore on.

"I don't have a job. I hope the new government will give me a job," said one voter, Rashi Ayash, 50, a former lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi force. "I voted for the rule of law," he Ayash said after casting his vote.

A spokesman for Iraq's elections commission said all the nearly 5,200 polling stations nationwide were opening on schedule.

Turnout was expected to be low in the early hours as that is when most rebel attacks have been occurring in the last few months.