Fifty people were killed on Monday as suicide bombers attacked a political rally and Iraqi police and soldiers cast their votes early for a national election in two days' time, authorities and witnesses said, according to the Associated Press.
A suicide attacker killed at least 30 people and wounded 50 others at a Kurdish political gathering in the town of Khanaqin, 100 miles northeast of Baghdad, security sources said, the AP reported.
The Kurds were celebrating the television appearance of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd incapacitated since late 2012, who cast his vote in Germany where he was undergoing medical treatment, according to the AP.
"The attacker snuck among the crowds near the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's headquarters and blew himself up, causing a tragic massacre," one police officer said, the AP reported.
In Northern Iraq and Baghdad, Sunni Muslim militants, mostly disguised in army and police uniforms, struck at polling centers as militants tried to disrupt Iraq's fourth national election since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, according to the AP.
A curfew begins on Tuesday night as ordinary Iraqis prepare to vote on Wednesday while security forces are at war with an al-Qaeda offshoot, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, in western Anbar province and other areas encircling the capital, the AP reported.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is battling for a third term in office but faces fierce opposition from political opponents, with sectarian violence in the Shi'ite Muslim-majority country at its most intense since 2008, according to the AP.
In the western Mansour district of Baghdad, six police died and 16 others were wounded when a suicide bomber dressed as a policeman detonated his explosives at the entrance of a school being used for voting, police and medical sources said, the AP reported.
