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Iraq attacks kill 18

Agencies, Baghdad
Insurgents detonated a suicide car bomb at police headquarters in the Iraqi town of Baiji yesterday, killing at least 10 people, and shot dead eight Iraqi soldiers at a checkpoint in attacks ahead of Jan. 30polls.
Witnesses said burned bodies were scattered in the compound in Baiji, an oil refining town in the Sunni heartland north ofBaghdad. A police official said at least 20 people were wounded, mosdy police.
Near Baquba, another guerrilla stronghold northeast of the capital, gunmen opened fire on a checkpoint and killed eight soldiers, a National Guard officer said.
Iraqi security forces have bome the brunt of insurgent attacks as the polls approach. Election officials have also been repeatedly targeted and threatened, and voting centers -- many in schools-have been hit by insurgents.
Police in Basra said mortars were fired overnight at three schools in the city that will be used as voting centers. They said nobody was wounded.
Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, is in the maitdy Sltia south of the country where support for the
elections is strong.
Iraq's 60-perccnt Shia majority expect die polls to cement their dominance in Iraqi politics after years of oppression during the rule ofSaddam Hussein.
But many Sunni Arabs, who make up around 20 percent of the Iraq's nearly 26 million people and from whom Saddam drew most of / his ruling class, want the vote to be postponed.
Guerrilla violence and intimidation in Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland means that even many Sunnis who want to vote are too afraid to do so.
Several major Sunni Arab parties say they will boycott the polls after their calls for a delay were unheeded.
A scries of attacks targeting Sliias in Iraq has raised concern that Sunni insurgents want to take advantage of sectarian disagreements over the election to trytoprovokemorc conflict between the two communities.
Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the US government have insisted the polls should go ahead, although they concede that some areas may be too unsafe for voting to take place.
The government says it is preparing a range of measures to protect voting stations, including a possible ban on traffic. Iraqis in dangerous areas will also be allowed to register and vote on the same day, rather than having to pre-register.
US troop levels will be at their highest in Iraq over the election, at around 150,000. American soldiers arc expected to form an outer line of defense while Iraqi security forces will guard pollfrigstations.
"We will provide broad area security coverage, while the Iraqi military and police provide security closer to the polling sites and polling centers. You won't see coalition forces at the polling centers,” the top US commander in Iraq, General George Casey, said in astatementyesterday.
"You will see Iraqi police primarily. and those police will be supported by other Iraqi police and National Guard. So, it will essentially be a ring concept around the polling centers.”