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 the vote to choose the 275-member National Assembly would push ahead even in areas still wracked by violence – including Fallujah, Mosul and other parts of the volatile Sunni Triangle.
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.
In Fallujah, Marine Maj. Jim West said Sunday that U.S. troops have found nearly 20 “atrocity sites” where insurgents imprisoned, tortured and murdered hostages. West said troops found rooms containing knives and black hoods, “many of them blood-covered.”
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.
The storming of Fallujah has heightened tensions throughout Sunni Arab areas, triggering a number of clashes:
* 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, although the military did not say whether the target was among them.
* Witnesses said U.S. troops raided a Sunni mosque in Haqlaniyah, arresting cleric Douraid Fakhry and detaining dozens of residents in nearby homes. The U.S. military denied that a mosque was raided.
* South of Baghdad, a convoy of Iraqi National Guard and police in Latifiyah were attacked by insurgents armed with guns, rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs, the U.S. military said. There were several Iraqi casualties.
* 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.
* In an Internet statement posted Sunday, al-Zarqawi’s terror group, Al-Qaida in Iraq, claimed it killed 17 Iraqi National Guardsmen from al-Kisik. The claim could not be independently verified. Hastings said he had no report of missing Iraqi guardsmen.
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