7 killed in suicide bomber attack after Iraqi vote

PanARMENIAN.Net - A suicide bomber killed seven people at an Iraqi vote counting center on Thursday, June 20 evening, police said, hours after polls closed in two Sunni Muslim-dominated provinces, according to Reuters.

Most Iraqis voted for provincial councils in April but the Shi'ite-led government postponed elections in Anbar and Nineveh, citing security concerns after months of protests by the country's Sunni minority.

The decision to delay voting in those governorates was criticized by the United States, which said it would compound a sense of Sunni marginalization that has fuelled a wave of violent unrest.

More than 1,000 people were killed in militant attacks in Iraq in May, making it the deadliest month since the height of sectarian bloodletting in 2006-07.

The suicide bomber blew himself up at a vote-counting center in the city of Ramadi in Anbar province, killing seven people, four of whom were members of Iraq's electoral commission.

Earlier on Thursday, a roadside bomb hit a bus carrying five electoral officials in the town of Baiji in Nineveh, killing one, police said. In the provincial capital Mosul, a mortar round was fired at a checkpoint near a voting center, wounding two soldiers. On Wednesday, a suicide bomber embraced and killed a Sunni political leader, also in Nineveh. Separately, the bodies of three men kidnapped on Wednesday were found handcuffed with bullets to the head and chest in the town of Sharqat, 260 km (160 miles) northwest of Baghdad. Two of the men were farmers and the third a policeman.