With election a week away, Iraqi government clamps down

Baghdad, Iraq ? The Iraqi government pledged Saturday it would do everything in its power to protect voters from insurgent attacks during next week’s national elections, as militants announced they’d killed 15 captive Iraqi national guardsmen for cooperating with the Americans.

Eight other Iraqi guardsmen and an Iraqi civilian were injured Saturday when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt near the gate of a military camp near Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad, Iraqi officials said.

Guerrillas in the northern city of Mosul blasted a building to be used as a polling station with machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire Saturday, injuring one civilian, a hospital official said.

Meanwhile, Iraq is facing what appears to be a new surge in kidnappings of foreigners after a decline in recent months. Al-Jazeera television broadcast a videotape in which militants said they had kidnapped a Brazilian engineer in an ambush near Beiji.

The tape did not show the hostage but displayed his identification card, listing his name as Joao Jose Vasconcelos Jr., 55.

Police said the engineer was missing after an ambush Wednesday in Beiji in which a British security guard and an Iraqi colleague were killed.

Faced with the persistent violence — and expectations it will increase — Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib announced further security measures for the Jan. 30 balloting, in which Iraqis will choose a new 275-member National Assembly and 18 provincial councils.

Al-Naqib said Baghdad’s international airport would be closed for three days starting on the eve of the balloting.

The nighttime curfew in Baghdad and other cities will be extended and restrictions imposed on private vehicles to guard against car bombs, he said, adding that all leaves and passes for police and military forces have been canceled for the election period.

Iraqi Interior Minister Falah Al-Naqib detailed sweeping plans Saturday to close borders, ban driving, shut down the country's major airport and institute a broad curfew in an attempt to maintain security for the Jan. 30 elections.

“We have mobilized all our forces as a government,” al-Naqib said.

Still, the minister did not play down the gravity of the security threat, nor the difficulties facing this country in organizing and conducting a nationwide election in the midst of a virulent insurgency.

“There are dangers and there are threats to throw the elections process into chaos, but we hope that our security plan will be up to the standards. We don’t rule out an escalation from the terrorist forces,” he said.

Sunni Muslim rebels have vowed to disrupt the balloting, and Sunni clerics have urged postponement until the security situation improves. But leaders of the Shiites, estimated at 60 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people, have demanded an election, believing their majority status will bring them power long denied by Sunni Arabs.

Underscoring the grave security challenge, the insurgent Ansar al-Sunnah Army announced on a Web site that it had killed 15 Iraqi national guardsmen seized off a commercial bus this month in the town of Hit.

As of Saturday, at least 1,371 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 1,077 died as a result of hostile action, the Defense Department said. The figures include three military civilians.Since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 1,233 U.S. military members have died, according to AP’s count. That includes at least 968 deaths resulting from hostile action, according to the military’s numbers.

“After the investigation, they confessed to the crimes they have committed with the crusader forces,” the group said. “God’s verdict has been carried out against them by shooting them. … They should be a lesson to others.”

Ansar al-Sunnah Army has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces, including a December suicide bombing that killed 22 people, most of them Americans, at a U.S. military mess tent at Mosul.

U.S. and Iraqi officials believe most of the country is secure enough for elections except Baghdad and three mostly Sunni Arab provinces. Although Iraqis there will have the chance to vote, insurgent attacks and intimidation may lead to a disappointing turnout.