Iraq Watch: December 13, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - As Iraqi expatriates began voting in the nations landmark parliamentary elections four U.S. soldiers, assigned to Task Force Baghdad, were killed in a roadside bombing northwest of the capital.

Meanwhile in political related violence Tuesday, a Sunni candidate was assassinated in the volatile Sunni city of Ramadi, located west of Baghdad. Mezher al-Dulaimi, who was running as head of the Free Progressive Iraqi Party, was gunned down as he was filling up his car at a gas station in Ramadi's Bakir neighborhood. Three of al-Dulaimi's bodyguards were wounded in the shooting. South of Baghdad, in Latifiyah, prominent Shiite politician Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer escaped an assassination attempt when a roadside bomb exploded next to the convy he was traveling in.

In other political developments, a group of over 1,000 Sunni clerics issued a fatwa, or religious edict, urging Sunnis to participate in Thursday's election. Tuesday's fatwa all but solidifies a large Sunni turn out for the parliamentary electoral process. Elsewhere, the insurgent group the Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI) released a statement ordering its followers to refrain from attacking polling stations on Thursday. The militant group reiterated, however, that this does not mean they support or approve of the political process and vowed to continue the jihad against occupation forces and their Iraqi counterparts.