Suicide bombers kill 21 in Iraq

Suicide bombers killed 21 people in attacks on an Iraqi police academy and a checkpoint yesterday, part of a campaign to derail January 30 elections which Iraq's prime minister vowed will go ahead.

The first bomber rammed an explosives-packed car into the police academy in the town of Hilla, south of Baghdad, in a lawless area known as the "Triangle of Death", police spokesman Hadi Hatif said.

Hours later, a suicide car bomber killed six people at a checkpoint manned by police and National Guards in the northern city of Baquba, police and hospital sources said.

The attacks were the latest by insurgents who have killed more than 90 people, mostly policemen, this week alone in a campaign targeting the US-backed interim government and its fledgling security services.

They came a day after gunmen assassinated Baghdad's provincial governor, Ali al-Haidri, and a suicide truck bomber killed 11 people outside a police commando headquarters, a surge of violence that drew fresh calls for delaying the ballot.

"The government is committed to running the elections on schedule," Prime Minister Iyad Allawi told a news conference. "We will not allow violence and terrorists to stop the political process," Mr Allawi said.

"We know some Iraqis fear voting but we have to overcome those fears," he added.

Mr Allawi insisted he had a plan to safeguard voters but gave few details. Raging violence has shattered any trust in local security forces that hardly seem able to protect themselves.

Insurgents regard security force members, politicians and any Iraqi working with US-led forces as collaborators with a foreign occupier, and have marked them for death.

The US general in charge of Baghdad said up to 35,000 US troops would help guard the poll in the Iraqi capital.

"Every single soldier assigned to taskforce Baghdad will be out or supporting the elections in some way on election day and that will be in excess of 35,000 on that day," Major General Peter Chiarelli, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division responsible for security in Baghdad told a news conference.

Up to 230,000 people of Iraqi origin could vote at polling stations across the United States in Iraq's national elections at the end of the month, an official said yesterday.

Peter Erben of the Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration (IOM) told a news conference in Geneva another 150,000 may vote in Britain - the main US ally in the 2003 invasion of Iraq - and 250,000 in Syria.