BAGHDAD — A vegetable truck rigged with explosives blew up yesterday outside a Shi’ite mosque northeast of Baghdad, and gunmen sprayed automatic fire into a bakery in a Shi’ite district of the capital in sectarian violence that killed at least 23 persons.
The attacks occurred as election officials announced provisional results from the Jan. 30 elections for provincial councils in 12 of the 18 provinces, showing Shi’ite religious groups winning handily over secular tickets in local races in much of the country.
Final results from the more closely watched national race for the 275-member National Assembly are expected in a few days. A Shi’ite-dominated ticket endorsed by the clergy is also leading in the national contest, indicating the growing influence of religion in the politics of the new Iraq.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made a surprise one-day visit to Mosul and Baghdad, hailing what he called progress in Iraqi security forces after seeing some of them in training. But he said it was too soon to discuss when U.S. troops could begin coming home.
An American soldier from Task Force Baghdad was killed in a bombing yesterday west of the capital, the U.S. military said. More than 1,450 U.S. service members have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.
In other violence yesterday, a suicide driver rammed a U.S. Bradley fighting vehicle and exploded in Salaheddin province north of Baghdad, injuring three soldiers, the military said.
Two Iraqis were killed by a roadside bomb near Tal Afar in northern Iraq, and two other Iraqi civilians were killed during a clash between U.S. troops and insurgents in Mosul.
U.S. Marines killed two insurgents during an attack last night on a Marine position near Husaybah along the Syrian border, the military said.
Overall, at least 31 persons were killed yesterday, including 23 in the two sectarian attacks.
The bombing outside the Shi’ite mosque took place in Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad. A pickup truck loaded with vegetables exploded just as worshippers were leaving prayer services. At least 12 persons were killed, police said.
In the attack on the bakery in the Shi’ite area of eastern Baghdad, gunmen in several cars blocked the street in front of the shop and stormed inside, shooting and killing 11 persons, police said.
The attack appeared to fit a pattern of brutality by Sunni extremists against Shi’ites as the majority community stands on the verge of taking power as a result of the elections.
Many Sunni Arabs, who form the core of the insurgency, are believed to have stayed away from the polls, either out of fear of terrorist reprisals or opposition to an election with tens of thousands of U.S. and other foreign troops on Iraqi soil.
A U.S. official said turnout in the insurgency stronghold of Anbar province was believed to be “in single digits,” although no figures have been released from that area.
Yesterday, the election commission released what it said were final results and turnout figures from local races in Baghdad and 11 other provinces, most of them predominantly Shi’ite or Kurdish.
Turnout in Baghdad for the local races was 48 percent, despite long lines in Shi’ite and religiously mixed neighborhoods. Polling centers in the heavily Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah never even opened.
The biggest turnouts reported yesterday were from two Kurdish provinces — Dohuk with 89 percent and Sulaimaniyah at 80 percent. The lowest figure — 34 percent — came from Diyala, which is home to Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds.
The biggest surprise was Babil province, a mixed area that includes the insurgent stronghold known as the “triangle of death,” where 71 percent of registered voters turned out.
Turnouts in the other areas ranged from 59 percent in largely Shi’ite Maysan province to 73 percent in the Shi’ite religious centers of Karbala and Najaf.
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