Rebels strike Iraqi forces after bin Laden call

Insurgents overran a police post near Saddam Hussein's home town yesterday, hauled 12 men outside and shot them in a dramatic show of force, a day after Osama bin Laden declared holy war on the US-backed election.

The dawn massacre in Tikrit, where the guerillas also blew up the police station, was the bloodiest in a spate of attacks in Iraq's Sunni minority heartlands north of Baghdad; at least five other policemen were killed and several National Guards.

In Samarra, US forces banned cars from the streets after an attack on a police station and two attacks on US troops, residents and the US military said. A suicide car bomber failed to assassinate a National Guard general in Baghdad.

The timing of the attacks and broadcast of the al Qaeda leader's audiotape seemed coincidental but together they racked up the pressure on Iraqi voters to stay at home on January 30 and seemed aimed to instil fear in Iraq's new security forces.

Both have grave implications for US prospects in Iraq. Outgoing US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a television interview that the United States "cannot allow murderers and terrorists" to deny the Iraqi people their right to vote and pledged to carry on with the January 30 ballot.

Bin Laden's call for a boycott of the election and his endorsement of Islamist ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's campaign of bombing and kidnap will find few willing supporters in Iraq. But the threat of being killed will put many off voting anyway.

The most prominent party from Saddam's long dominant Sunni minority already pulled out of the election on Monday, saying violence in Sunni areas meant the vote could not be fair.

The chances have risen that an assembly will be elected that gives Shi'ites an exaggerated majority, and so finds little legitimacy among Sunnis. That will upset Washington's hopes for a representative government that can handle its own security.

"The party that pulled out, we hope that they will review their actions and take another look at security closer to the event, and perhaps rejoin the process," Mr Powell also told Fox television in an interview on Tuesday.

If Sunni areas fail to vote, Mr Powell said the resulting assembly should at least give a nod to the Sunni minority when it appoints a new government.

"For the government to be representative and for the government to be effective, the transitional national assembly would certainly have to take into account the ethnic mix," Mr Powell said.

Hours after the purported bin Laden audiotape was broadcast on Al Jazeera television, calling anyone who voted an "infidel", gunmen swarmed over the Mukashifa police compound shooting the dozen officers in the compound execution-style. They then blew up the station.