Lockdown fails to halt attacks in Iraq's cities

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Insurgents fired rockets at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad Saturday, killing two Americans.

Mortar fire also boomed across Baghdad Saturday as the world awaited results of a vote that will echo from militant Islamic Web sites in the Mideast to the halls of the White House. A suicide bomber killed eight people in a Kurdish city near the Iranian border, and insurgents blasted polling stations in eight cities.

Iraqi officials have predicted that up to 8 million of 14 million voters — just over 57 percent — will turn out for today's election to choose a National Assembly and governing councils in the 18 provinces. Voters in the Kurdish-run north also will select a regional parliament.

But turnout is uncertain, especially in the Sunni Arab areas of central, northern and western Iraq where the insurgency is most deadly. About 300,000 Iraqi and American troops are on the streets and on standby to protect voters.

Iraqi expatriates in 14 countries cast absentee ballots on the second of three days of voting abroad, and officials said that by late Saturday, about two-thirds of those registered had voted so far. Iraqi leaders had been disappointed that less than a quarter of the estimated 1.2 million expatriate Iraqis eligible to vote worldwide registered to do so.

As thousands of ballots arrived at 5,200 polling stations, government spokesman Thaer al-Naqeeb warned Iraqis to expect "sabotage operations" carried out by "the enemies of Iraq."

But he encouraged Iraqis "to overcome their fear" and turn out at polling station. "It is important. It will preserve the integrity of Iraq," he said. "If you vote ... the terrorists will be defeated."

President Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni Arab running for a National Assembly seat, expressed hope that turnout will be high." But he acknowledged many Iraqis would probably stay away "because of the security situation."

Despite the lockdown — and a nighttime curfew — guerrillas hit the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone with a rocket Saturday evening, killing a Defense Department civilian and a Navy sailor and wounding four other Americans, according to State Department spokesman Noel Clay in Washington. Another American soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad. More than 40 American troops have been killed in the past three days.