Iraqis ignore US vote amid bloodshed

Iraqis traumatised by violence barely heeded the US election yesterday as a suicide bomber attacked a US checkpoint near Baghdad airport and kidnappers seized five more foreigners, including an American.

After President George W. Bush clinched victory over Democratic challenger John Kerry, one Iraqi in a Baghdad restaurant said it was time Washington altered course in Iraq.

"We hope the American president will change his policy towards Iraq... because Iraq is oppressed and can't remain occupied," Salem Shummari told Reuters Television.

During vote-counting earlier, many Iraqis kept their television sets tuned to Ramadan religious programmes.

"Will Kerry turn occupation into liberation? No. Has Bush kept his promises? No. Whoever wins we will be at their mercy," said Raad Fadel, selling musical instruments in Baghdad.

Mr Bush's deadliest Islamist enemy Osama bin Laden said the US president had dragged America into a quagmire in Iraq and warned for the first time of retaliation for Iraqi deaths.

"Bush's hands are sullied with the blood of those on both sides just for oil and to employ his private companies," the al Qaeda leader said in a full internet broadcast of a video aired in part by Arabic Al Jazeera television last week.

"Remember that for every action, there is a reaction."

Hungary and the Netherlands said they would withdraw their troops from a US-led multinational force in Iraq by March. Bulgaria said it will cut its military presence by 10 per cent.

Before Mr Kerry conceded defeat, US Marines watched election coverage at their base near Falluja, west of Baghdad.

First Lieutenant Sara Hope, 24, had only one thought in mind: "I am leaving in March no matter who wins."

Attacks and kidnappings have intensified as Marines step up pressure on Falluja and Ramadi before an expected offensive to retake rebel cities to enable elections to go ahead in January.

US warplanes hit Falluja, sending plumes of black smoke rising from the eastern edge of the city. Seven explosions shook the area and a hospital official said a woman was seriously wounded and a teenage girl lost one leg.

A roadside bomb killed a US soldier and wounded another at Salman Pak, just south of Baghdad, the military said.

A suspected suicide bomber blew up his vehicle on the main road to Baghdad airport, killing an Iraqi security man and wounding seven civilians, witnesses and hospital staff said.

Reuters photographs showed soldiers loading a corpse in a black bag into a military ambulance. A US spokesman at the airport later said it was the body of an Iraqi security man.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said river patrol police had found three unidentified bodies under a bridge across the Tigris on Tuesday. He said they were mutilated but could not confirm an earlier report that they had been decapitated.