Baghdad, March 08: Iraq’s general election saw a strong turnout of at least 50 percent in most areas, initial forecasts showed on Monday after a ballot hit by rocket, mortar and bomb attacks that killed 38 people.
Millions voted in the poll, winning international praise for their courage and determination in a crunch test of the war-shattered nation’s young democracy less than six months before American combat troops quit the country.
US President Barack Obama paid tribute to all those who cast ballots in the nationwide poll on Sunday, the second Parliamentary Election since US-led forces ousted dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.
“I have great respect for the millions of Iraqis who refused to be deterred by acts of violence, and who exercised their right to vote,” Obama said in his first reaction to the ballot.
His comments came at the end of voting on a warm spring day that saw long queues at polling stations in Baghdad, in Sunni towns that mostly boycotted the 2005 parliamentary vote, and elsewhere across the country.
The Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) said in preliminary estimates that voter turnout was 50 percent or more in all but one of the 16 provinces it was able to provide figures for.
Turnout was strongest, 76 percent, in Arbil, capital of Iraq’s autonomous northern Kurdish region, and in the disputed province of Kirkuk, 70 percent, which is at the centre of a battle for control between Arabs and Kurds.
The Sunni stronghold provinces of Nineveh — 65 percent — and Anbar — 64 percent — were not far behind, according to data compiled late Sunday, IHEC officials said.
Full election results are not expected until March 18, and after that it will likely take months of horse-trading before a new government is formed as no single political bloc is set to emerge dominant from the vote.
The United Nations praised voters and election organisers, while urging caution about premature predictions of the outcome.
“This day has been a triumph of reason over confrontation and violence,” Ad Melkert, the UN’s envoy to Iraq told reporters in Baghdad on Sunday.
“The polling process was well-organised, orderly… and polling procedures were properly applied,” he said after visiting voting centres in the Iraqi capital and the northern city of Kirkuk.
Baghdad bore the brunt of Sunday’s violence, with around 70 mortars raining down on mostly Sunni areas.
The cities of Fallujah, Baquba, Samarra and several other areas were also hit by mortar rounds or bombs, many of them exploding near polling stations.
–Agencies