BAGHDAD - Three deadly blasts shattered an early round of voting in Iraq Thursday, killing 17 people in an apparent attempt to sow fear ahead of Sunday's elections.
Thursday's voting was for those who might not be able to get to the polls Sunday. The vast majority of early voters were the Iraqi police and military who will be working election day to enforce security. Others voting included detainees, hospital patients and medical workers.
The bombings in Baghdad came a day after similar assaults in the northeastern city of Baqouba that killed more than 30 people.
In the wake of the blasts, streets were quiet in the capital as tense-looking police and army manned checkpoints and carefully searched cars. Security forces locked down the sites of the explosions.
In the first attack, a Katyusha rocket killed seven people in the primarily Shiite neighborhood of Hurriyah about 500 yards from a closed polling station, police said.
The second attack hit the upscale Mansour neighborhood, where a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest near a group of soldiers lining up at a polling station, killing six people.
In the third blast, another suicide bomber blew himself up near policemen waiting to vote in the Bab al-Muadham neighborhood in central Baghdad, killing four people.
Despite the violence, the streets of the capital were somewhat electric. Ministry of Interior vehicles traded the sound of their sirens for songs about nationalism. As they drove toward a polling station, policemen danced on the back of their trucks.
