These are just early preliminary numbers, I don't think anyone is expecting firm results until a few weeks but wouldn't it be ironic if the Bush backed Allawi lost to these turbaned fundies and we just brought a nice healthy theocracy into the formally secular Iraq?Shiite bloc takes lead in early Iraqi election results
Friday, February 4, 2005 Posted: 3:52 PM EST (2052 GMT)
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Preliminary results from Iraq's election released Friday show that the predominantly Shiite Muslim south backed the party of Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, over the secular party of interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
Officials haven't tallied results yet from Iraq's Sunni and Kurdish areas, and the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq cautioned the early data on how the Shiite region voted cannot be used to interpret the final election results because of the skewed demographics.
Complete election results are expected next week.
Voter turnout in Sunday's election for a 275-member National Assembly and 18 provincial councils remains unknown.
So far, election workers have counted 3.3 million votes, or 35 percent of all polling stations. The results are from 10 of Iraq's 18 provinces in the southern part of the country.
The al-Sistani-backed United Iraqi Alliance also won most of the absentee votes, The Associated Press reported, citing preliminary figures the International Organization for Migration released Friday. The organization supervised Iraqi expatriates' votes in 14 countries.
Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, the Shiite coalition's leader, spent many years exiled in Iran, where he participated in a growing movement against Saddam Hussein. The alliance has several clerics vying for office, but its leaders said the group is not seeking to force Islamic law on Iraq.
Italian journalist abducted
As Iraqis wait for election results, violence continues to plague the country.
Abductors grabbed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, 54, from her car Friday in Baghdad, police said, and three U.S. soldiers died in separate incidents Thursday and Friday.
Men in a black Kia snatched Sgrena, who works for the Italian daily Manifesto newspaper, after she finished interviews at Nahrain University.
The newspaper is asking nongovernmental and humanitarian groups to help find and arrange Sgrena's release, editor Loris Campetti said.
The death toll for U.S. troops stands at 1,444 after a makeshift bomb killed a soldier Friday outside the north-central city of Tikrit, the military said.
Thursday incidents claimed two more troops, one in the northern Babil province, and another in northern Iraq south of Mosul, a military statement said.
A top Pentagon official told lawmakers Thursday that U.S. work in Iraq is not done after this week's elections, citing more needed training for Iraqi security forces.
"As impressive as that election was, Iraq still faces a difficult road ahead," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "This is not a time to sit on our hands and congratulate ourselves." (Full story)
In other violence, insurgents killed 12 Iraqi army recruits and critically wounded two others in an ambush Wednesday on a bus near the northern city of Kirkuk, an Iraqi army spokesman said.
The insurgents stopped the bus, made the recruits disembark and then shot them one by one in the village of Zab, Maj. Gen. Anwar Mohammed Amin said.
Amin said that most of the recruits were under 25 and that they were unarmed and headed for home. Zab is about 45 miles (70 kilometers) southwest of Kirkuk.
Insurgents also attacked a five-vehicle police convoy traveling to Baghdad on Thursday, killing one Iraqi police officer and injuring three others, officials said. The attackers used rocket-propelled grenades and small arms near the Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad, a police officer said.
Other developments
The U.S. military is holding three Frenchmen of Arab descent who were captured in November during the Falluja offensive, a Western official said. French newspaper Le Figaro reported the men were fighting alongside insurgents near the Iraqi city west of Baghdad, which was a base of operations for the insurgency.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told CNN's "Larry King Live" that he twice offered President Bush his resignation during the height of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, but the president refused to accept it. (Full story)
CNN's Jane Arraf, Arwa Damon, Stephanie Halasz, Octavia Nasr, Nic Robertson and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.
BTW is there a reason why US election results are clear within hours of poll closings yet it takes weeks for these elections to be called?
So they had to build a whole new election system from scratch; that's going to be less efficient at counting votes than the U.S. one which has been running for years.
