BAGHDAD: Attacks against security forces killed 15 people yesterday as the UN’s envoy to Iraq warned that the country’s election campaign would be “highly divisive” amid a year-long surge in bloodshed.
UN special envoy Nickolay Mladenov underscored fears the polls could worsen a long-standing political deadlock in which Iraq’s fractious national unity government has passed little in the way of significant legislation.
Yesterday morning, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to an army recruitment centre in northern Iraq, killing six would-be soldiers and wounding 14 others.
The attack struck in Riyadh, a mostly-Sunni town in Kirkuk province. Elsewhere in Kirkuk, bombings targeting the military killed six soldiers and wounded 14 others, while attacks in Kut and Mosul, left two policemen dead.
Another policeman was killed in a fire fight with militants south of Baghdad.
Near-daily bloodshed is part of a long list of voter concerns that include lengthy power cuts and poor running water and sewerage services, rampant corruption and high unemployment.
But campaigns are rarely fought on individual issues, with parties instead appealing to voters’ ethnic, sectarian or tribal allegiances or resorting to trumpeting well-known personalities. A lack of effort at cross-sectarian politics could, Mladenov said, be a major issue.
“Campaigning will be highly divisive,” saidfrom his office in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone complex. “Everyone is ratcheting it up to the maximum, and you could see this even before officially the campaign started.”
The sharp rise in violence during the past year has fuelled fears Iraq is slipping back into the sort of all-out communal conflict that killed tens of thousands in 2006 and 2007. UN figures released on Tuesday put the toll for March at 592 dead. AFP
