Insurgents pressed their bloody campaign to sabotage Iraq's Jan. 30 elections with three car bombs and a roadside attack Monday, one near the prime minister's party headquarters in Baghdad and others targeting Iraqi troops and a U.S. security company. At least 16 people were killed, bringing the toll over two days to about 50. Early Tuesday, a suicide car bomb detonated near an Iraqi National Guards barracks in western Baghdad, killing six people and wounding 40, police said. The blast in Qadessiyah district occurred not far from the site of Monday's explosion in front of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's party headquarters. Also Tuesday, gunmen killed the governor of the Baghdad province, Ali al-Haidari, and six of his bodyguards, officials said. Al-Haidari's three-vehicle convoy was passing through Baghdad's northern neighborhood of Hurriyah when gunmen opened fire, said the chief of his security detail, who asked only to be identified as Maj. Mazen. The country's defense minister, meanwhile, traveled to Egypt to seek help in getting Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority to take part in the elections. Leaders of the Sunni community, about 20 percent of Iraqis, say the country is far too unsafe to hold the vote. Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan suggested that if Sunnis agreed to participate, the vote could be postponed by a few weeks to give them time to prepare.
