World News 28-01-2005 Iraqi Election Under Way who: Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon what: Announces plan to send 220 more British troops to Iraq as historic free election begins where: House of Commons, LONDON when: Yesterday snippet: Voting has begun in the first free Iraqi election since 1953 "with expatriates across the world casting their ballots for the country`s new government," reports Friday`s ITV news website. "People in Iraq will go to the polls on Sunday but two days before voting is already under way around the globe with Iraqis living in Australia casting the first votes." "The election on 30 January is portrayed as a turning point for Iraq," says Patrick Cockburn, Baghdad correspondent to The Times, "but few in the capital believe that there will be any diminution of violence. Many say the poll will serve only to crystallise differences between the three main Iraqi communities: the Shia, Sunni and Kurds." The Financial Times reports that defence secretary Geoff Hoon has informed the Commons of "plans to send another 220 troops to the country, barely a week after the prime minister told MPs there were `no plans to expand the British contribution`." The day before the announcement, on Wednesday, 31 US marines lost their lives when a CH 53 Sea Stallion transport helicopter crashed in the desert in western Iraq - the largest single loss of US military personnel since the conflict began. Meanwhile, "three suicide car bombers hit the rebel Sunni town of Royadh," says The Mirror. "Two of the cars packed with bombs exploded at the same time near an Iraqi army position and police station. A third vehicle blew up moments later nearby. Four Iraqi policemen and two soldiers were killed, along with three civilians." This followed a car bomb explosion near interim prime minister Ayad Allawi`s party offices in Baghdad on Monday, which wounded eight police and two civilians. Iraq`s most wanted militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, vowed on Sunday to wage a "bitter war" against the coalition in the run-up to war. He called the candidates "demi-idols" and the voters "infidels", but Tuesday`s Scotsman reported a blow against the insurgency with the arrest of master bomb-maker Sami Mohammed al-Jafi, who "is believed to have been behind 32 of the bloodiest car bomb blasts since the invasion of Iraq". In Osnabrück, Germany, reports continue to come in from the court martial of British soldiers accused of torturing and sexually abusing Iraqi civilians. The defendants accuse Major Daniel Taylor, from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, of giving them illegal orders to ensure the detained looters had "a hard time". He gave evidence on Monday but denied that Iraqis were being "beasted" - a military term for relentless harrassment - by being forced, in the words of defence lawyer Joseph Giret, to "run around the inside wall of the camp, two to three miles, running with milk boxes above their heads". Major Taylor replied: "I wouldn`t have permitted it." [... more]

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