Iraq concedes election fraud

 

BAGHDAD: Iraqi officials nullified election results in more than 30 polling stations due to fraud in last month's provincial balloting, but the cases were not significant enough to require a new vote in any province, the election chief said yesterday.

Poll results will be announced on Wednesday.

Violence continued unabated. A civilian, an Iraqi and an American soldier were shot down in front of their homes in three separate attacks in the northern city of Mosul, while a bomb blast near a market in Baghdad's Shi'ite slum district of Sadr City killed a man and wounded 19 other people.

The army uncovered 10 bodies in a shallow mass grave in Al Taji, near Baghdad, believed to date back about two years to a period when Al Qaeda terrorised the area.

And in an act of defiance against sucide attacks, tens of thousands of pilgrims crowded the Imam Hussein mosque in Karbala yesterday to mark Arbain, one of the most important events in the Shi'ite calendar.

l Iraq is employing too many people in government jobs and a fall in oil prices makes the situation untenable, a UN report warned yesterday.

A dominant public sector, which offers secure and relatively highly-paid jobs, is stifling efforts to create viable businesses offering alternative employment, it said.

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