Irregularities color Iraqi ballot

An Iraqi mother, right, mourns over the body of her son Ayed Abdel Ghani Yussef, a senior adviser at the Iraqi Minister of Industry in Baghdad, yesterday. Unidentified gunmen shot Yussef outside his house as he was preparing to go to work. The woman on the left is Yussef's aunt. PHOTO: AFP

The skies cleared over Baghdad yesterday after a sandstorm, and provinces resumed flying ballot boxes here so they can be checked by election officials investigating "unusually high" vote totals in 12 Shiite and Kurdish provinces, where as many as 99 percent of the voters reportedly approved Iraq's draft constitution.

The investigation by Iraq's election commission, which it announced on Monday, has raised the possibility that the results of the referendum could be called into question.

Meanwhile, insurgents resumed attacks that had fallen sharply during Saturday's vote at heavily protected polling stations across the country.

In Baghdad, militants shot and killed an adviser to one of Iraq's top Sunni Arab officials as he drove to work yesterday, police said.

In fighting in western Iraq, two US Marines and four militants were killed near the town of Rutba, not far from the Jordanian border, on Monday, the military said.

At least 1,978 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in Mar. 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

On Monday, the US military announced that its warplanes and helicopters had bombed two western villages the day before, killing an estimated 70 militants near a site where five US soldiers died in a roadside blast. But residents said at least 39 of the dead were civilians, including children.

"The sandstorm ended Monday night, ballots boxes are now arriving here again from the provinces, and our employees have resumed their counting," Adil al-Lami, head of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, said yesterday.

"If we suspect that the numbers are higher or lower than we expected, we have to double-check them, and this audit means it might be several more days before we announce the final outcome," he said. "We are not concerned whether the outcome is `yes' or `no.' We are only interested in making the process technically a success."

He said the commission is "a neutral body" acting "as a referee."

The investigation by the commission in Iraq's landmark referendum has raised questions about irregularities in the balloting.

Word the review came Monday as Sunni Arab leaders repeated accusations of fraud after initial reports from the provinces suggested the constitution had passed. Among the Sunni allegations are that police took ballot boxes from heavily "no" districts, and that some "yes" areas had more votes than registered voters.

The Electoral Commission made no mention of fraud, and an official with knowledge of the election process cautioned that it was too early to say whether the unusual numbers were incorrect or if they would affect the outcome. But questions about the numbers raised tensions over Saturday's referendum, which has already sharply divided Iraqis.

Most of the Shiite majority and the Kurds -- the coalition which controls the government -- support the charter, while most Sunni Arabs sharply opposed a document they fear will tear Iraq to pieces and leave them weak and out of power.

Election in many provinces have released their initial counts, indicating that Sunni attempts to defeat the charter failed.

But the commission found that the number of "yes" votes in most provinces appeared "unusually high" and would be audited, with random samples taken from ballot boxes to test them.

In violence yesterday, insurgents shot and killed Ayed Abdul Ghani, an adviser to Osama al-Najafi, Iraq's industry minister and one of the country's top Sunni Arabs.

The shooting occurred in new Baghdad, an eastern section of the capital, as Ghani was driving to work at about 7:45am, said police Maj. Falah Al-Mohammedawi.

Before Iraq's constitutional referendum, al-Najafi had predicted that voters would reject the document because it favors Kurds and majority Shiites.