BAGHDAD — Bitter demonstrations and a series of roadside bombings and shootings across Iraq on Sunday and early today left at least 21 people dead, ending a relatively placid stretch since the parliamentary election a week and a half ago.
The violence comes after more than a week of discontent and acrimony among some voters over the preliminary results of the Dec. 15 balloting for the first permanent national government since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
With those early tabulations showing a probable landslide for Shiite Muslim religious parties, losing slates and their supporters have cried foul. More than 1,000 election fraud complaints have been filed with Iraqi officials, and there have been waves of protests in and around Baghdad.
"With these election results you're giving the resistance a reason to continue their resistance," said Nabeal Mohammed Younis, a professor of political science and a Sunni Muslim Arab nationalist.
Sunni Arabs, a minority who enjoyed favored status under Saddam Hussein's former government, as well as secular Iraqis have expressed disappointment and even disbelief that they did not win more votes in the election.
U.S. officials have already become resigned to the looming election results. Since the vote, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have visited Iraq and met with transitional Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari of the Shiite religious coalition.
Western officials have begun optimistically likening the ascendant Shiite religious political parties to the U.S.-backed Christian Democratic parties that dominated German and Italian politics after World War II.
At the same time, angry protests about the vote took place in cities across Iraq against a backdrop of violence.
A suicide car bomber slammed into two Iraqi army vehicles in central Baghdad on Sunday, killing five soldiers and wounding seven police and civilians, police Maj. Mohammed Younis told Associated Press.
The U.S. military also announced the deaths Sunday of two soldiers from Task Force Baghdad. Both were killed by roadside bombs.
In a separate incident, an American tank was set ablaze when it hit a roadside bomb on a Baghdad highway, Iraqi officials said. The U.S. military confirmed the report but would not release details on casualties.
Two Iraqi soldiers were killed in a mortar attack on an Iraqi army base in Mahmoudiya. Another mortar blast injured two people near the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad.
