Gunmen Kill Five Police at Iraq Checkpoint

By JASON STRAZIUSO

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Gunmen shot and killed five police officers at a checkpoint north of Baghdad on Monday, and a suicide car bomber slammed into a police patrol in the capital, leaving three more dead, police and hospital officials said.

The car bomb was one of five that insurgents set off in the capital on Monday. At least two people were killed and 15 injured by the other four bombs, officials said.

Gunmen killed five officers and wounded four at a police checkpoint 30 miles north of Baghdad, a morgue official in Baqouba said.

Gunmen in Baghdad killed a civilian who was driving his two children to school, a hospital official said. A professor was shot and killed by insurgents in western Baghdad, police said.

Bloodshed claimed at least 18 lives across Iraq on Sunday, including two U.S. and five Iraqi soldiers killed by bombings in Baghdad. The attacks are part of an increase in violence seen in recent days after a relative lull in attacks around the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections.

Iraq’s electoral commission was expected Monday to announce the results from balloting of Iraqis living overseas.

Partial results already released from voting in Iraq showed that the United Iraqi Alliance, a religious Shiite coalition, with a large lead.

Those results have been attacked by Sunni Arab and secular Shiite parties, which charge the election was tainted by fraud and other irregularities.

The Alliance, headed by cleric Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, denies there was any fraud and is urging Iraqis to accept the results as it tries to form a "national unity" government drawing people from all communities.

In Baghdad’s Shiite slum of Sadr City, about 1,000 demonstrators rallied on Sunday to support the United Iraqi Alliance. Sunni Arabs staged smaller demonstrations in Fallujah and Baqouba to support demands that election officials look closely at results for any signs of fraud.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a member of the Kurdish minority, sought to calm tensions by saying Sunday that all factions will have a role in the new government.

"The government will not be formed without the Sunni Arabs," Talabani told reporters in the northern resort town of Dukan, where he met with Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to discuss the political situation.

Talabani said there must be a "consensus government that preserves national unity."

He said the rights of the Kurdish people must also be guaranteed.

All of the election complaints demonstrate the difficulty that Iraqi parties will face in forming a government after final election results are released in early January.

About 1,500 complaints have been lodged about the elections, including at least 35 that the Iraqi election commission said could be serious enough to change the results in certain areas.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko paid an unannounced one-day visit to Iraq Monday to visit his country’s troops, his office said. The visit comes amid the pullout of the remaining 867 Ukrainian troops from Iraq. All are due home by Dec. 30, making the former Soviet nation the latest country to wind down its presence in the coalition forces. Ukraine initially contributed 1,650 troops to the U.S.-led force.

In other violence, attackers also blew up an oil pipeline south of Samara, 60 miles north of Baghdad, Sunday night, police Capt. Mohammed Hasan said. The pipeline has been a frequent target of insurgents, he said.