Insurgents Target Polling Places

Insurgents in the Sunni-dominated city of Samarra killed at least four Iraqi national guardsmen and five civilians Thursday in a series of firefights, car bombings and explosions that rocked a community U.S. forces had declared pacified in October.

The insurgents also blew up a school building and fired mortar rounds into another school in Samarra, targeting polling places for Sunday’s landmark national election.

The fierce clashes in Samarra, about 65 miles north of Baghdad, were part of a fresh wave of preelection violence that followed the deadliest day for U.S. troops since they led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Thirty-one of the 37 troops killed Wednesday died in a helicopter crash in the desert near the Jordanian border. U.S. officials continued to investigate the circumstances of the crash, which occurred during bad weather.

The uncertainty and fear evident on the streets of the ancient city of Samarra is mirrored throughout Iraq’s Sunni Muslim Arab heartland, where insurgent retaliation has been threatened against residents who go to the polls Sunday.

Fighting was reported Thursday between U.S. troops and insurgents in greater Baghdad, Ramadi to the west and Kirkuk in the north. One Marine was killed and four were injured by mortar rounds south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

This morning, a car bomb targeting a gathering of police in southern Baghdad killed at least four Iraqis, officials said.

Leaflets widely circulated in Samarra and throughout Sunni Arab areas are warning residents that voting could cost them their lives.

Polling places “are going to be targets for actions by your brothers, the mujahedin,” read one flier distributed in Samarra, using the word for holy warriors, as the rebels refer to themselves.

The threats have caused many candidates to want their names kept secret, and the government is attempting to delay identifying polling centers until the last minute to avoid making them targets.

News agencies reported Thursday that the militant group headed by Abu Musab Zarqawi posted a video on the Internet showing the killing of a national assembly candidate from the party of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. In the video, the candidate is shot after advising the public “to stay away from supporting and cooperating with the occupying enemy.”

U.S. troops wrested Samarra from guerrilla control last year in an operation that commanders said underscored the coalition’s resolve to smash guerrilla safe-havens and eliminate “no-go” zones. But U.S. and allied troops have been unable to maintain order in the city this week amid a wave of attacks.

The spectacle of U.S. forces crushing opposition forces in large-scale operations only for the insurgents to reassert themselves as U.S. troops withdraw has been a recurring pattern in the Sunni Arab cities and towns, where the insurgency is most intense. Cities such as Mosul, Ramadi, Fallouja and Baqubah have seen guerrillas regroup to fight anew after U.S. troops apparently have taken control.

The pattern is likely to continue repeating itself, U.S. commanders acknowledge, until Iraqi security forces are capable of taking over from U.S. and coalition forces.

“We cannot stay here forever in the numbers that we’re here now,” Army Gen. George W. Casey, the commander of U.S. and allied troops here, told reporters. “The Iraqis have to take ownership over this.... You don’t defeat insurgents militarily. You defeat them when the people decide that they want to be part of the political process.”

Since Jan. 1, Casey said, insurgents have already killed at least 375 Iraqi civilians, lawmen and soldiers.

Efforts to provide security were tightened across the country Thursday as about 300,000 Iraqi and U.S. forces began moving into position for election day amid apprehension about a further uptick in violence that many see as inevitable.

A three-day ban on driving is due to take effect Saturday in a move to curb car bombs.

But authorities bracing for a bloody weekend said they were especially worried about mortar attacks, which are daily occurrences here. They said they also were worried about “walking bombers”: insurgents wearing suicide vests -- laden with explosives, ball bearings, nails, and other deadly shrapnel -- who may seek to enter polling places posing as voters and detonate their payloads.

Although they strike less frequently than vehicle bombers, walking bombers have undertaken coordinated attacks with lethal accuracy. Last February, assailants wearing suicide vests blew themselves up at two party headquarters in Kurdistan, killing more than 100 people.

And, in Iraq’s deadliest insurgent attacks to date, as many as a dozen bombers with suicide vests detonated their payloads in March amid crowds of worshipers during the Shiite religious holiday of Ashura in Baghdad and the southern holy city of Karbala. About 200 people died.

Iraqi security forces charged with protecting more than 5,000 polling places nationwide will be directed to be on the lookout for anyone wearing baggy clothing that could conceal explosives or weapons. No one seeking to enter polling sites will be exempt from searches, said Hussein Ali Kamal, deputy Interior minister.

“Especially Muslim or Christian clerics wearing their cloaks should be checked,” Kamal said in an interview.

“Women who appear to be pregnant. Anyone wearing a cast on his leg or arm. Those walking in a strange way. And those in wheelchairs.”

Other stringent security measures this weekend will include extended night curfews, a ban on intercity travel and a shutdown of Baghdad’s international airport.

In Ramadi, insurgents struck several targets with rockets and mortar fire Thursday, including the government center of Al Anbar province, now being guarded by Marines after Iraqi police walked off the job because of insurgent threats. There were no reports of U.S. casualties.

In preparation for the election, Marines and Iraqi commandos were deployed around polling places in Ramadi. In the evening, the sounds of insurgent artillery, answered by Marine fire, could be heard.

Reuters reported that four Iraqi national guardsmen were kidnapped and executed in Ramadi and that explosions hit four schools to be used as polling places.

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Times staff writers Alissa J. Rubin in Baghdad, Tony Perry, traveling with the 1st Marine Division in Ramadi, and a special correspondent in Samarra contributed to this report.