Militants: Inactivity was to keep Sunnis from harm

An Islamic Army in Iraq statement said it expected Sunni Arabs would vote.
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- A prominent militant group said Friday that the reason it did not attack polling stations on Iraq's election day was to avoid harming Sunni Arab voters.
In an Internet statement posted on an Islamic Web site, the Islamic Army in Iraq said it had expected Sunni Arabs -- who stayed away in droves from elections held in January either as part of a cleric-led boycott or for fear of being attacked -- to vote Thursday to try to win back power from Iraq's now dominant Shiite parties.
"We knew Sunni [Arabs] would participate in this game [because] most were forced to through the oppression, torture and destruction and suffering they receive from the slaves of the Cross [the Americans] and the Shiites," it said.
The statement, which could not be immediately verified, added that the group did not believe in democracy, only God.
Violence was very low in Iraq on Thursday while Sunni Arabs voted in large numbers, bolstering U.S. hopes that the polls will produce a broad-based government capable of ending the daily violence that has ravaged the country since Saddam Hussein's 2003 ouster.
Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi who is the director of security and terrorism studies at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, identified the Islamic Army in Iraq as a jihadist group that draws its strength from the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. Before being ousted, Saddam's forces detained several people who later became members of the group, indicating there is no love lost between them and the former regime.
The group has claimed responsibility for several bloody attacks targeting both Americans and Iraqi Shiites.