Iraqis defied waves of bomb, mortar and rocket attacks that killed 38 people to turn out Sunday in huge numbers to vote in elections. Polls closed at the end of a day that saw long queues at polling stations in Baghdad, in Sunni towns that mostly boycotted the 2005 parliamentary vote, and in other center across Iraq. Partial results were not due until Thursday, with full results expected on March 18, according to the United Nations. But most observers said it would take at least a couple of months of political horsetrading before a new government was formed as no political bloc was set to emerge dominant from the vote. US President Barack Obama acknowledged Sunday there would be “very difficult” days ahead for Iraq, as the fledgling democracy completed its second parliamentary election since the 2003 US-led invasion. “We know that there will be very difficult days ahead in Iraq and there will probably be more violence, but like any sovereign independent nation, Iraq must be free to chart its own course,” Obama told reporters in the White House Rose Garden. He also praised the courage of Iraqi voters for casting their ballots amid a wave of bomb, mortar and rocket attacks, and commended the Iraqi government for the way it conducted the polls. The capital bore the brunt of Sunday's violence, with around 70 mortars raining down on mostly Sunni areas as people voted in the second parliamentary ballot since US-led forces ousted dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003. The cities of Fallujah, Baquba, Samarra and several other areas were also hit by mortar rounds or bombs, many of them exploding near polling stations. An Al-Qaeda group, which sees the election as validating the Shiite-led government and the US occupation, warned Friday that anyone voting ran the risk of being attacked, heightening an already tense security situation. Baghdad's streets were all but deserted of vehicles bar those ferrying thousands of police and soldiers, as people journeyed on foot to polling stations across the capital. The violence, which came despite 200,000 police and soldiers deployed in Baghdad and hundreds of thousands more across the country of around 30 million citizens, killed 38 people and wounded 110, an interior ministry official said. Twenty-five of the dead perished when a rocket flattened a residential building in the north of the capital, and all the other deaths were in or near the city. Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki said the attacks “are only noise to impress voters but Iraqis are a people who love challenges and you will see that this will not damage their morale.”
