Four people were killed and 33 injured in three bombings across Iraq on Saturday as voters in the semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region went to the polls to elect a new parliament and president, according to dpa. A roadside bomb exploded as police patrolled the disputed northern city of Kirkuk, police Colonel Salah Sabr told the German Press Agency dpa. Five policemen and one civilian were injured in the blast on Corniche Street, he said. The attack came as Kurdish voters, many of whom hope to make Kirkuk and its nearby oil fields the capital of a future independent Kurdish state, cast their ballots. The Kurdish parliament last month approved a draft constitution that included the city in its definition of Kurdistan. The bombing in Kirkuk followed twin car bombs in Falluja, in Iraq's Sunni heartland, some 50 kilometres west of the capital Baghdad. The first targeted the offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party, an influential Sunni Arab political group. Four people were killed and two were critically injured in the blast that ripped off the side of a nearby building. At least 27 more people sustained injuries, police said. In what appeared to be a coordinated attack, a second car exploded near a restaurant in the north of the city. The offices of Vice-President Tariq al-Hashemi's Iraqi Islamic Party were severely damaged. A vehicle ban was imposed in the city and roads leading into it were closed after the attack. Falluja was the site of some of the worst fighting between Sunni insurgents and US and Iraqi forces until the government persuaded armed groups to switch sides and form Sahwa Councils to maintain security with promises of weapons, training and money last year. Since then, the city has been relatively quiet, though a series of recent attacks targeting those who work with the government have raised concerns that insurgents may be regrouping in the area. Last week, Sheikh Naim Salih al-Halubsi, the leader of the local Sahwa, or "Awakening," Council, was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt.
