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Suicide Bomber Targets Iraqi Ballots Ahead of Recount

by Reuters

   KIRKUK, IRAQ --

   One person was killed in Iraq's Kirkuk on Sunday when a suicide car
   bomb went off near a storage site housing ballot boxes from a May
   national election, police sources said, two days before a manual
   recount was to begin.

   Another 20 people were wounded in the explosion. The warehouse holding
   the ballot boxes was not damaged, the sources said.

   Iraq's parliamentary election in May was clouded by allegations of
   fraud. On Saturday a judges' panel announced that a recount of votes
   mandated by the Iraqi parliament and the courts was to begin Tuesday,
   starting with Kirkuk.

   The driver detonated the vehicle before reaching the entrance of the
   warehouse after officers guarding the facility opened fire, the police
   sources said.

   Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's electoral list came in first in the
   national election, which saw a historically low turnout.

   After weeks of negotiations on forming a government, Sadr formed an
   alliance with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, whose electoral list came
   in third and with second-placed Iran ally Hadi al-Amiri's bloc.

   In early June, a storage site holding half of Baghdad's ballot boxes
   went up in flames in an incident al-Abadi described as a "plot to harm
   the nation and its democracy."