Yawer expected Saturday that only a minority of Iraqis would vote. (Reuters)

BAGHDAD, January 30 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Iraqis nervously cast ballots Sunday, January 30, in their country's first election in more than 50 years against a backdrop of bombings and mortar attacks.

President Ghazi Al-Yawer was among the first to vote and he urged the population to turn out, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“Thank God, Thank God. Blessed are the Iraqi elections. We greet all Iraqi people and urge them not to give up their rights, to vote for Iraq, elect Iraq and not to give up on Iraq,” Yawar said seconds after casting his ballot.

On Saturday, January 29, the interim president predicted that only a minority of Iraqis would vote.

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi also cast his ballot, hailing the vote as a “start of a new era”.

“The most obvious aspect of the success of this election today is that they are being held at the scheduled date. This is an accomplishment the government and myself are very proud of,” he told reporters.

Election officials put on a brave face over the election.

“Voting bureaus have opened all over Iraq and until now we have not been informed of any problems,” Abdul Hussein Al-Hindawi, the chairman of Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission, told AFP early in the morning.

Around 14 million Iraqis are eligible to cast ballots at some 5,700 polling stations to elect a 275-seat National Assembly that will in turn choose a Presidency Council and draft the country’s new constitution.

The constitution must then be ratified through a national referendum – scheduled to take place at the end of 2005.

The vote is based on a single constituency, proportional closed-list system, meaning that if a party gets 10 per cent of the votes, it gets 10 per cent of the seats.

Authorities imposed a massive security clampdown and tens of thousands of Iraqi and US-led troops were on patrol across the country after militants vowed to turn election day into a bloodbath.

The Iraqi government closed the borders and the main Baghdad international airport for the election weekend.

There was also a night-time curfew across most of the country and the authorities banned travel between provinces.

Enthusiastic Shiites

An Iraqi election official shows women voters where to place their ballots at a polling station in Baghdad. (Reuters)

The country appeared divided for its first election since Saddam Hussein was overthrown in a US-led invasion-turned-occupation in 2003 that caused deep rifts in the international community.

In Shiite-dominated southern Iraq voters turned out enthusiastically.

Shiite political frontrunner Abdel Aziz Hakim, who tops the United Iraqi Alliance slate endorsed by Grand Ayatollah Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, cast his ballot and hailed the day's significance.

“Today's elections are very important because they will decide the country's future,” he told reporters.

Taha Lufta waited outside a station at the Al Amaali school in the southern city of Basra when it opened at 7:00 am.

“I came here to be first and encourage the people to vote,” he said.

“I'm an old man. I want to be a model for others.”

Lufta said he had voted for the United Iraqi Alliance “because it includes Islamic-oriented candidates, and we want an Islamic constitution in Iraq.”

The election could see Shiites taking control of the government in the Arab country for the first time in 11 centuries.

Long lines of people were also reported outside voting stations in Kurdish strongholds such as Arbil in the north of the country.

The mood in Sunni-dominated areas was grim.

Saddam's hometown of Tikrit was said to be a ghost town. An AFP correspondent went to eight polling stations where staff said no-one had voted.

Taha Hussein, head of the local council in the Sunni Muslim stronghold of Samarra, said nobody would vote there because of safety fears.

“Nobody will vote in Samarra because of the security situation,” he told AFP.

The Association of Muslim Scholars, the highest Sunni religious authority in Iraq, championed the call for election boycott.

The Islamic Party of Iraq, the main Sunni political party, had quit the election race also over aggravating insecurity.

String of Attacks  

A video grab image shows damaged cars outside a polling station in Baghdad. (Reuters)

A bomber struck Sunday outside a polling centre in Baghdad, killing seven civilians and two policemen, an interior ministry source said.

He detonated his explosives belt outside a voting centre in Zaiyuna in eastern Baghdad, added the source.

Shortly after polls opened, four people were killed and seven others wounded when a mortar struck a voting centre in Baghdad's Shiite slum of Sadr City, police lieutenant Mohammad Hamid told AFP.

Earlier, one person was killed and four others wounded when a bomber blew himself up near a polling station in Baghdad's upmarket Mansur district in the western part of the capital, the interior ministry said.

Police and soldiers had stopped the bomber as he tried to enter the sealed-off cordon around the polling station, a US military officer said.

A female voter was killed and a second woman and her child were wounded in a mortar attack on a polling station in the northern Iraqi town of Balad, police said.

Six explosions jolted the northern Iraqi city of Mosul although the general hospital had no immediate word on casualties.

Arms fire also reverberated in the northern flashpoint city of Baquba, an AFP correspondent said.

In the southern city of Basra, a mortar shell landed near a polling station but there were no reports of casualties.

The day earlier, two Americans were killed in a rocket attack on the US embassy in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, a startling breach of the security intended to persuade the population to vote.