Insurgents kill dozens of Iraqis ahead of the constitutional referendum

Photo: US soldiers walk around at the scene of a suicide bomb attack in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday.

BAGHDAD, Iraq- Insurgents determined to wreck Iraq's constitutional referendum killed nearly 50 people and wounded dozens in a series of attacks Tuesday, including a suicide car bomb that ripped apart a crowded market in a town near the Syrian border. U.S. and Iraqi officials had repeatedly warned that the insurgents would step up their attacks to undermine Saturday's referendum, a crucial step in Iraq's democratic transition. In the deadliest attack in Iraq in nearly two weeks, a suicide car bomb exploded at about 11 a.m. in a crowded open market in the northwestern town of Tal Afar, killing 30 Iraqis and wounding 45, said Brig. Najim Abdullah, Tal Afar's police chief. He said all the victims appeared to be civilians since no Iraqi or U.S. forces were in the centre of Tal Afar, which is 420 kilometres northwest of Baghdad. Insurgents also used two suicide car bombs, three roadside bombs and five drive-by shootings and a mortar attack on a used-clothes market in the capital on Tuesday to kill a total of 15 Iraqis and wound 29, police said. A suicide car bomb that exploded around noon at an Iraqi army checkpoint in a busy area of western Baghdad killed eight Iraqi soldiers and one civilian and wounded 12 soldiers. In Kirkuk, 290 km north of Baghdad, a drive-by shooting killed two policemen riding in a cab and their driver. The violence came four days ahead of Iraq's key vote on the new draft constitution, which Kurds and the majority Shiites largely support and the Sunni Arab minority rejects. Sunnis are campaigning to defeat the charter at the polls, although officials from all sides have been trying up to the last minute to decide on changes to the constitution to swing Sunni support. Many Sunnis fear the document would create nearly autonomous Kurdish and Shiite mini-states in the north and south, where Iraq's oil wealth is located, and leave most Sunnis isolated in central and western Iraq under a weak central government in Baghdad. Whether the constitution passes or fails, Iraq is due to hold elections for a new parliament on Dec. 15. Across Iraq, militants are currently demanding that Iraqis boycott the referendum, and have killed at least 388 people in the last 16 days in a series of attacks. "I expect violence because there's a group of terrorists and killers who want to stop the advance of democracy in Iraq," U.S. President George W. Bush said Tuesday on NBC-TV's Today show. But he also said he expected Iraqis would vote. On Thursday, the government plans to impose a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew and to limit vehicle traffic across the country to improve security before Saturday's vote. More than 600 Iraqi and U.S. forces also conducted search operations in southern Baghdad early Tuesday, detaining 57 suspected militants and killing two, the U.S. military said. In another development, Abdul Hussein Hindawi, one of the eight highest-ranking officials on the Independent Electoral Commission in Iraq, said Tuesday that Iraqi law will allow Saddam Hussein and thousands of other Iraqi detainees who have not been brought to trial to vote in the constitutional referendum. "All non-convicted detainees have the right to vote. That includes Saddam and other former government officials. They will vote," Hindawi told The Associated Press. Said Arikat, a United Nations spokesman in Baghdad, said UN officials recently left 10,000 copies of the constitution at Iraq's U.S. detention centres for distribution there. Farid Ayar, another commission member, said detainees will vote on Thursday, two days ahead of the general vote. Saddam's long-awaited trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 19 on charges that he and seven of his regime's henchmen ordered the 1982 massacre of 143 people in a mainly Shiite town north of Baghdad following a failed attack on Saddam's life. More than 12,000 detainees are being held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, Camp Bucca and two other U.S. military camps in Iraq, many awaiting trial or, in some cases, formal charges. Many of the detainees are believed to be Sunni Arabs who were rounded up by U.S. and Iraqi forces on suspicion of supporting Sunni-led insurgent groups. Tal Afar, 150 km east of the Syrian border, is located in an area where Iraq's Sunni-led insurgents have been active, making it difficult for coalition forces to maintain security in a large northwestern region of Iraq stretching to the Syrian border. On Sept. 28, a woman suicide bomber attacked an Iraqi army recruitment centre in Tal Afar, killing at least six people and wounding 30. The woman, disguised in men's clothing, detonated her hidden explosives while standing in line with job applicants outside the centre. That attack appeared to be carried out in retaliation for a four-day offensive by U.S. and Iraqi forces that had routed insurgents in Tal Afar. Iraqi authorities claimed that nearly 200 suspected militants were killed and 315 captured during the offensive, which began Sept, 8. But when they completed the sweep, they discovered many of the insurgents had slipped out, some of them through a network of underground tunnels. On Tuesday, officials continued to distribute five million copies of the constitution to voters, but parts of Baghdad and other areas of Iraq complained about not receiving them. That was especially true in Anbar, the western province where insurgents have been most active and where coalition forces recently ended an offensive near the Syrian border and were completing two others: Operation River Gate in Hadithah, Haqlaniyah and Parwana, and Operation Mountaineer in and around Ramadi. By Saynan Salehdinne