Iraq Watch: December 16, 2005

Vote Counting Begins

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq began the monumental process of tallying the votes of the estimated 70% of eligible voters who turned out to cast their ballots in yesterday's landmark parliamentary elections.

Final results are not expected to be disclosed for approximately two weeks although preliminary results could be released within the coming days. The conservative Shiite bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), is anticipated to once again garner the most slots on Iraq's 275 seat parliament.

In violence Friday - the traditional Muslim day of prayer - an Iraqi soldier and four Iraqi children were killed by a mortar near a school used as a polling station yesterday in Parwana. Elsewhere, the bodies of five Iraqi security forces were discovered in the northern Baghdad suburb of Kazimiyah. Four of the executed bodies were wearing Iraqi Interior Ministry uniforms while the fifth body, which was found decapitated, was dressed in Iraqi army garb.

In another development, Iraq's deputy interior minister, Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal, announced that Iraqi forces had apprehended the most wanted militant in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, last November during the U.S.-led incursion into the former rebel stronghold city of Fallujah but was subsequently released because his identity was unknown. Kamal stated that the Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaida in Iraq was unarmed when captured and that "[al-Zarqawi] was like any other citizen who was suspected. There was a simple interrogation with him and he was released."