Iraq Watch: October 25, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - On the same day that Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission announced that the draft constitution voted on during the October 15 national referendum passed the U.S. military announced that the death toll among U.S. service members since the start of 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' in March 2003 has reached the grim mark of 2,000.

The draft constitution passed despite the charter being rejected in two Sunni-dominated provinces. Al-Anbar and Salahuddin provinces voted down the constitution with a 96% and 81% 'no' vote respectively.

For Sunnis to have nullified the draft constitution they would have had to garnered a two-thirds 'no' vote in three of Iraq's 18 provinces. Although Nineveh province voted against the charter, with a 55% 'no' vote, it did not reach the two-thirds opposition needed to reject the document leaving the minority Sunnis one province short of rejecting the draft constitution.

Overall, the country voted 79% to 21% to approve the controversial document. Voter turnout nationwide was 63%, up from 60% in the January elections when Sunnis largely boycotted the political process.

Almost immediately after the voting statistics were released several prominent Sunni leaders rejected the results calling the entire process 'fraudulent' and a 'farce'.

Hussein al-Falluji, a Sunni politician who was on the constitutional drafting committe, told Reuters, "We all know that this referendum was fraud conducted by an electoral commission that is not independent. It is controlled by the occupying Americans and it should step down before elections in December."

In further violence in Iraq on Tuesday, a suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle outside a government ministry building in the predominately Kurdush city of Sulaimaniyah, 160 miles northeast of Baghdad. At least 12 people were killed in the explosion.

The attack was claimed by the terrorist group al-Qaida in Iraq, led by Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

In the capital city of Baghdad, four roadisde bombs and a series of shootings killed at least six people, including five Iraqi security forces, and injured nearly 45 others.

Elsewhere, the bodies of eight Iraqi border guards were discovered some 155 miles west of Karbala, near the Saudi Arabian border, on Tuesday. All eight men were found blindfolded, bound, and shot to death.