Amid Attacks, a Party Atmosphere on Baghdad's Closed Streets
By DEXTER FILKINS
Published: January 30, 2005
AGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 30 - After a slow start, voters turned out in very large numbers in Baghdad today, packing polling places and creating a party atmosphere in the streets as Iraqis here and nationwide turned out to cast ballots in the country's first free elections in 50 years.
American officials were showing confidence that today was going to be a big success, despite attacks in Baghdad and other parts of the country that took at least two dozen lives. The Interior Ministry said 36 people had been killed in attacks, Agence France-Presse reported.
But the violence did not seem to have deterred most Iraqis.
The chairman of the Independent Election Commission of Iraq, Fareed Ayar, said as many as 8 million people turned out to vote, or between 55 percent and 60 percent of those registered to cast ballots. If 8 million turns out to be the final figure, that would represent 57 percent of voters.
The figure was based on national returns, Mr. Ayar said, and included the provinces of Anbar and Nineveh, which have large Sunni populations. The predicted low turnout in Anbar, a hotspot of Sunni resistance to the American occupation, was exceeded to such an extent that extra voting materials had to be rushed to outlying villages, where long lines were formed at polling stations, Mr. Ayar said.
Polling stations closed at 5 p.m. Iraqi time, or 9 a.m Eastern time.
Preliminary voting figures are expected to be known Monday or Tuesday, although final results will not be available for about 10 days.
In Washington, Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice said the elections are "going better than expected." She added in an interview on ABC TV's "This Week" that "What we are seeing here is the voice of freedom."
A sobering note came later in the day. A British C-130 Hercules military transport plane crashed near Balad, 35 miles northwest of Baghdad, a Ministry of Defense spokesman in London said. The spokesman said the plane crashed at 5:25 p.m. Iraqi time.
Balad is the site of the largest American airfield in Iraq and is the main military logistical center. Helicopters were hovering over the site of the crash as darkness fell, looking for survivors.
The London spokesman said he had no further details on the crash, but some reports said the wreckage was spread over a wide area, suggesting it may have been shot down. Hercules transport planes can carry up to 42,000 pounds of cargo, or up to 92 people.
The streets of Baghdad were closed to traffic, but full of children playing soccer, and men and women walking, some carrying babies. Everyone, it seemed, was going to vote. They dropped their ballots into boxes even as continuous mortar shells started exploding at about noon.
Thirty civilians and six police officers died in mortar attacks and suicide bombings around the country, the Interior Minister reported, according to A.F.P. Twenty-two of the deaths occurred in Baghdad, Reuters reported, where mortar attacks took three lives and 19 people were killed by suicide bombers. At least 29 were wounded in the attacks in the capital, Reuters said.
But if the insurgents wanted to stop people in Baghdad from voting, they failed. If they wanted to cause chaos, they failed. The voters were completely defiant, and there was a feeling that the people of Baghdad, showing a new, positive attitude, had turned a corner.
No one was claiming that the insurgency was over or that the deadly attacks would end. But the atmosphere in this usually grim capital, a city at war and an ethnic microcosm of the country, had changed, with people dressed in their finest clothes to go to the polls in what was generally a convivial mood.
"You can feel the enthusiasm," Col. Mike Murray of the First Cavalry Regiment, said outside a polling station in Karada, who added that the scene in Karada was essentially true for the whole area.
In Khadamiya, a mixed area in northwest Baghdad, the turnout was also large, with some representatives of political parties saying the turnout could approach 80 percent.
Even in the so-called Sunni Triangle people voted, too. In Baquba, 60 miles north of Baghdad, all the polling stations that reported indicated a huge turnout.
In Mosul, the restive city to the north, large turnouts were reported, even in the Sunni Muslim areas, and despite threats and scattered attacks with bombs, mortars and small arms fire.
"They didn't hit," Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the American commander in Mosul, said after he arrived at the election coordination center. "But that is what we think they were trying to do."
By late afternoon, Maj. Anthony Cruz, the American liaison officer with the electoral commission in Mosul, said that there were thousands of voters appearing at each polling center "across the board." |
