Baghdad, Iraq ? Iraqi authorities set Jan. 30 as the date for the nation’s first election since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and pledged that voting would take place throughout the country despite rising violence and calls by Sunni clerics for a boycott.

Farid Ayar, spokesman of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, said voting would push ahead even in areas still racked by violence — including Fallujah, Mosul and other parts of the volatile Sunni Triangle.

The vote for the 275-member National Assembly is seen as a major step toward building democracy after years of Saddam’s tyranny.

But the violence, which has escalated this month with the U.S.-led offensive against Fallujah, has raised fears voting will be nearly impossible in insurgency-torn regions — or that Sunni Arabs, angry at the U.S.-Iraqi crackdown, will reject the election.

If either takes place, it could undermine the vote’s legitimacy.

Ayar insisted that “no Iraqi province will be excluded because the law considers Iraq as one constituency, and therefore it is not legal to exclude any province.”

To bolster Iraq’s democracy, 19 creditor nations — including the United States, Japan, Russia and many in Europe — agreed Sunday to write off 80 percent of the $38.9 billion that Iraq owes them. U.S. and Iraqi troops have been clearing the last of the resistance from Fallujah, the main rebel bastion stormed Nov. 8 in hopes of breaking the back of the insurgency before the election.

Other developments

U.S. Army Lt. Dan Kearney, of the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, calls his headquarters while searching for insurgents suspected of planting a roadside bomb in Mosul, Iraq. U.S. and Iraqi forces worked Sunday to put down an uprising launched by guerrillas who seized police stations and other sites.

• In Fallujah, Marine Maj. Jim West said Sunday that U.S. troops have found nearly 20 “atrocity sites” where insurgents imprisoned and murdered hostages. West said troops found rooms containing knives and black hoods, some bloodied.
• Marines from the 1st Marine Division shot and killed an insurgent Sunday who opened fire after pretending to be dead. The U.S. military is investigating a Nov. 13 incident in which an NBC videotape showed a Marine shooting a wounded man lying in a Fallujah mosque. Marines could be heard yelling that the man was pretending to be dead.
• In Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, insurgents ambushed an Iraqi National Guard patrol, killing eight guardsmen and injuring 18 others, police said.
• U.S. forces conducted a raid to capture a “high-value target” associated with Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Haqlaniyah, 135 miles northwest of the capital, a U.S. spokesman said Sunday. Six people were detained.
• To the north, American soldiers in Mosul discovered two more bodies, including that of an Iraqi Army soldier, near a site where the bodies of nine Iraqi soldiers were found a day earlier, said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings with Task Force Olympia.