Blasts hit offices of 5 parties as campaign grows violent

February 14, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

BAGHDAD (AP) — A political coalition led by one of the Iraqi prime minister’s fiercest critics temporarily halted its campaign Saturday for next month’s parliamentary elections after a number of its candidates were barred from running.

The country’s already-tense political atmosphere received another jolt late Saturday when blasts struck the offices of five parties — four of them Sunni — in Baghdad, wounding 11 people.

The back-and-forth political wrangling over the ban on more than 450 candidates for the March 7 vote has threatened to undermine Iraq’s political stability, worrying U.S. officials that it could throw the credibility of the elections into question and undo security gains.

The Iraqi National Movement, led by former Shiite premier Ayad Allawi, suspended its campaign for three days while it attempts to negotiate the return of dozens of its candidates, spokesman Haydar al-Mulla said.

He said it was unclear how many of the coalition’s candidates have been banned from running but said election officials initially put the number at 72.

The biggest blow to the group was the loss of one of its leaders, Sunni lawmaker Saleh al-Mutlaq. Al-Mutlaq — a sharp critic of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — has acknowledged he was a Baathist until the late 1970s but quit the party. A panel confirmed the ban on al-Mutlaq earlier this week.

He and other prominent Sunnis have slammed the blacklist as an attempt by al-Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government to sideline Sunnis, even though many Shiites have also been banned.

All but 177 of the 450 candidates on the blacklist either dropped out on their own or were replaced by their party. The head of Iraq’s election commission, Faraj al-Haidari, said an appeals panel only cleared 26 names on the blacklist to run.

U.S. officials are deeply concerned the ban could threaten Iraq’s political stability ahead of the withdrawal of American combat troops by the end of August.

Although violence has dropped sharply nationwide since 2007, the Iraqi government has warned there could be a spike in attacks ahead of the elections.

Saturday’s blasts struck the offices or homes of at least five political parties, including al-Mutlaq’s, two police officials said. The Sunni Youth Association and the home of a leader an independent Shiite party, al-Shaab, were also hit.

Eleven people were injured in the bombings, mostly bystanders or passing civilians, the officials said on because they are not authorized to release the information.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks.

The bombings come a day after a man purporting to be Abu Omar al-Baghdadi — the leader of an al-Qaida front group in Iraq — vowed in a new audiotape to violently disrupt Iraq’s elections and warned Sunnis not to take part in the vote.

The recording could not be independently confirmed, but the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group that monitors militant Web sites said the voice seemed like that of the man previously identified as al-Baghdadi.

The militant leader is a shadowy figure. The Iraqi government claims to have al-Baghdadi in custody, while the U.S. once even questioned his existence, saying he was a fictitious character used to give an Iraqi face to an organization dominated by foreign al-Qaida fighters.

Also Saturday, a barrage of rockets struck a joint American-Iraqi base near Amarah, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, injuring two Iraqi soldiers and damaging equipment, said Maj. Myles Caggins, a U.S. military spokesman.

The attack came a day after an Iraqi-U.S. raid searching for weapons smugglers at a nearby village left at least five people dead.

Caggins said the attack appeared to be “retaliation against the Iraqi security forces.”