Iraqi Government Moves To Restrict Movement

BAGHDAD — While insurgents carried out more violent attacks today, the government announced steps to restrict movement leading up to the Jan. 30 election by enforcing an evening curfew and by sealing its international borders.

Elsewhere in Iraq, a bomb exploded outside an office of a major Shiite party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, in the capital’s Jadriya neighborhood. The Associated Press said a suicide driver and three other people were killed in the explosion, which appeared to be an effort to intimidate Shiites.

The nation’s Independent Electoral Commission said today the international borders will be shut down between Jan. 29 and Jan. 31. A statement from the commission’s Farid Ayar added that Iraqis will be prevented from going between provinces and will be expected to observe a nighttime curfew during that period.

The government said the moves were designed to help ensure greater safety during the national election. Rebels have been accused of trying to disrupt the vote through a campaign of violence. U.S. and Iraqi authorities anticipate more insurgent attacks in the days leading up to the election in an attempt to thwart the vote from taking place.

Insurgent attacks flared across Iraq on Monday, targeting Iraqi security officers north of the capital and polling places in the southern city of Basra. The attacks killed at least 28 Iraqi police and soldiers, and U.S. authorities said two Marines had been killed in action in western Iraq.

A Catholic priest, who was kidnapped Monday, was released unharmed today.

The strikes suggested that Sunni Muslim rebels battling the U.S.-backed Iraqi interim government were intensifying their assaults in advance of the elections.

Echoing a long-held view among U.S. and Iraqi authorities, the top U.S. general here said in an earlier interview that the daily carnage was unlikely to abate soon.

“Is there going to be violence on election day? There is,” Gen. George W. Casey, who heads U.S. -led multinational forces in Iraq, acknowledged in a statement. “The enemy we’re fighting is not 10 feet tall, but he’s resourceful and he’s persistent....Violence will stay at about the same level for some time.”

The declaration by Casey, who seldom address the press corps here, appears to be consistent with recent Bush administration moves to downplay expectations that the elections will stanch the bloodshed.

In recent days, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul. D. Wolfowitz have stressed the likelihood that attacks will continue and may even become more fierce.

Wolfowitz, speaking in Jakarta, Indonesia, said it was impossible to guarantee “absolute security” against the “extraordinary intimidation that the enemy is undertaking,” news agencies reported.

U.S. strategists are aware that milestones such as the capture of deposed President Saddam Hussein 13 months ago and the return of Iraqi sovereignty seven months ago have failed to stem the violence. Nor has the U.S.-led retaking of former rebel enclaves in the largely Sunni cities of Fallouja and Samarra knocked out the insurgency.

Still, Casey predicted, the voting “will be a great victory for the Iraqi people.” About 300,000 troops and police, including U.S., Iraqi and multinational forces, will provide security on election day, the general said.