BAGHDAD — Despite continuing violence, Iraq's lively and colorful political campaign season was in full swing Saturday, with candidates using the airwaves and the streets to grab voters' attention before Dec. 15 parliamentary elections.
The campaigning has included rowdy demonstrations, such as a downtown rally Saturday morning in support of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr and catchy radio jingles: "Come and salute our list," a singer bellows during one ad for former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. "All parties are united on our list."
To create buzz, the newly formed Iraq Future Gathering ticket has organized youth soccer tournaments, and Iraqi Christians have tapped a well-known television actor to star in Assyrian-language ads.
But the campaign season has been hampered by bloodshed, including the drive-by shootings Saturday of four workers putting up election posters, the first known attack of the campaign season. One of the workers was killed, police said, and the other three were injured.
A wave of violence marred the run-up to Iraq's Jan. 30 transitional assembly election, with more insurgent attacks launched on the day of the vote than nearly any other day since the toppling of Saddam Hussein's government in 2003.
Iraqi and U.S. officials hope that widespread participation by the nation's rebellious Sunni Arab minority in the election might stanch the violence. But the insurgents have been relentless.
A suicide car bomber Saturday rammed into a crowd at a gas station near the mostly Sunni Arab city of Samarra, killing at least five and injuring 16. Another car bomb in Baghdad's upscale Qadisiya district injured four civilians. Insurgents on Friday killed a U.S. soldier during combat operations in western Iraq, the military announced Saturday.
In Iraq's south, sectarian strife continued with the reported killing of a Sunni cleric after his abduction by men suspected of belonging to Iraq's Shiite Muslim-dominated security forces. The body of the cleric, a member of the Muslim Scholars Assn., a Sunni group, was found Saturday afternoon near the British war cemetery in the city of Basra.
The steady violence, which drove Iraqi politicians off the campaign trail for the last assembly vote, hasn't stopped spirited efforts to galvanize voters for the upcoming election.
On campaign posters throughout the capital, Allawi is touted as "the man of the current era, the man of the future." Ads for onetime Pentagon protege Ahmad Chalabi say, "We liberated Iraq and we will build it together."
