Thousands Protest Over Iraq Election

More than 4,000 Sunnis rallied north of Baghdad today to protest against the results of Iraq's general election.

The protests came despite a statement from a UN official that outcome of the vote had been credible and transparent.

Supporters of the Iraqi Accordance Front, the main Sunni party, took the streets of Samarra, 100km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, carrying banners rejecting what protesters claimed was "election forgery".

However, at a Baghdad news conference organised by the Iraqi electoral commission, UN official Craig Jenness said the international election assistance team found "turnout was high and the day was largely peaceful", with all communities participating.

"Complaints must be adjudicated fairly, but we in the United Nations see no justification in calls for a rerun of any election," he added.

Iraqi officials said they had found some instances of fraud significant enough to cancel the results in some areas, but not to hold a rerun.

There were more than 1,500 complaints, 50 of them considered potentially serious enough to lead to the cancellation of results.

"After studying all the complaints ... the electoral commission will announce within the next few days some decisions about cancelling the results in stations where fraud was found," election official Abdul Hussein Hendawi said.

He said fraud had been discovered in the provinces of Baghdad, Irbil, Ninevah, Kirkuk, Anbar and Diyala.

Mr Jenness said the number of complaints represented less than one for every 7,000 voters.

Around 70% of Iraq's 15 million voters took part in the December 15 election. Preliminary results gave a large lead to the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shia bloc dominating the current government, but insufficient for it to govern without forming a coalition with other groups.

Two Sunni groups and the former prime minister Ayad Allawi's Iraqi National List, a secular Shia grouping, have threatened a wave of protest and civil disobedience if fraud charges are not properly investigated.

Negotiations to form government continue

Members of the governing United Iraqi Alliance today held talks with Kurdish leaders and said preparations were being made to choose a candidate for prime minister - who they have said must come from the alliance.

"We set up the mechanism to elect the new prime minister but have not started it yet. Any member of the Alliance has the right to be nominated for that post," the group's leader, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, said.

Alliance officials have indicated that the likely candidates for prime minister were the incumbent, Ibrahim al-Jaafari - who heads the Islamic Dawa party - and Adel Abdul-Mahdi, who belongs to the other main Shia party, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

"We are waiting for the final results of the elections and we are doing some preliminary consultations. After the announcement of the final results we will seek consensus," he said.

Final results are expected early next month. The Alliance is likely to win around 130 seats in the 27-seat parliament - short of the 184 needed to govern without forming a coalition.

Eight dead in prison shooting

An inmate at a Baghdad prison killed at least eight people and injured three others today when he grabbed an assault rifle from a guard and opened fire.

The prisoner snatched an AK-47 and fired indiscriminately, killing four guards and four inmates, Brigadier General Jalil al-Mehamadawi, of the Iraqi army, said.

Three inmates were also injured before guards overpowered and restrained the gunman, he said.

First Lieutenant Thair Mahmoud of the Iraqi police said his force was investigating the incident, which happened in the northern Baghdad suburb of Kadhimiya.

The prison - which also houses foreigners - was a justice ministry facility at the Adala Iraqi army base known to US forces as Camp Justice, officials said. Prisoners had been on a morning recreation break when the shooting began.

An account by the US military said one US soldier had been injured in what Sergeant Keith Robinson described as an attempted prison break.

"It was reported that 16 prisoners attempted to escape the facility after first storming the armoury and obtaining an undetermined number of weapons," he said.

Prison conditions in Iraq have been a cause of increasing controversy.

Last month, US troops discovered dozens of abused Sunni suspects in a secret Baghdad bunker run by the Iraqi interior ministry. Sunnis have accused the ministry of running Shia sectarian militias.

The US military is holding around 14,000 Iraqi suspects, and US commanders say they will not transfer the prisoners to Iraqi custody until they are sure of better standards.

US troops were at the centre of a major abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, and British troops have also been accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners in their care.