Authorities have detained 50 suspects in connection with an explosion in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, and have banned cars from entering the downtown area to prevent future car bombings, Governor Adnan al-Zurufi said Monday.

Hospital officials said the death toll from Sunday's blast in Najaf had risen to 54 and that 142 people were wounded.

"Fifty people, some of them from Najaf and others from outside, have been detained. One person detained this morning is a citizen of an Arab country. They are all being interrogated," al-Zurufi told reporters after taking part in a funeral procession attended by thousands of residents.

He added that provincial authorities will block off the central quarter which houses the Imam Ali shrine to prevent any more car bombings.

Also on Sunday, a suicide blast in the nearby Shi'ite city of Karbala killed 13 people and wounded 33.

The attacks in Najaf and Karbala have been blamed on Sunni Muslim extremists seeking to derail upcoming legislative elections.

They came just days after the official launch of the campaign for the January 30 vote.

Shi'ites, who make up around 60 percent of Iraq's population, have been strong supporters of the polls, which they expect will reverse the longtime domination of Iraq by the Sunni Arab minority.

Shi'ite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has declared that voting in the elections is a religious duty for all Shi'ites.

Asked if Sunday's attack had targeted Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who lives several hundred meters from the site of the blast, al-Zurufi said "we have had information for a long time that his eminence Ayatollah al-Sistani is a possible target but we are taking all measures to protect him."

Frustration grows

Residents of Falluja, the battle-scarred city west of Baghdad, must wait at least another week to return home, a US military officer said.

Many who fled before a US assault in November to drive out rebels are growing frustrated as they wait in tent camps to go home. They left more than six weeks ago with little more than their clothes and temperatures at night are now freezing.

Major Naomi Hawkins, a civil affairs officer dealing with the returnees, said on Sunday it would be a while longer before they go home.

"From now it is 7-10 days, but the plan is based on the security situation in the city," Hawkins said, with fighting continuing in several areas of the city.

The refugees say they had nothing to do with the guerrillas who made Falluja a base, and they have grown angry with the Americans and increasingly militant about the delay. Some people have demonstrated, demanding to return immediately.

Election ballot down to lottery

Spinning a big perspex drum filled with balls, not unlike a national lottery, Iraq's Electoral Commission determined yesterday where competing parties will rank on the ballot paper for the January 30 election.

More than 200 parties, blocs and individuals have signed up to contest the poll - around 7,700 candidates in all - and the order they appear on the ballot sheet, which could be many pages thick, will be determined by chance.

United Nations envoy to Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, pulled the first balls from the drum, as hundreds of candidates looked on expectantly, in a process designed for maximum transparency in the country's first democratic election in nearly 50 years.

"Today is a great day in the history of your great nation," Qazi told a crowd gathered in a room at a conference centre that used to be part of Saddam Hussein's presidential complex.

"It is truly in the interests of every Iraqi citizen, whatever their political views, to participate in this electoral process. It is the only way forward.

Iraq is being treated as a single electoral district. Registered voters will choose either an individual, party or coalition list of candidates, and seats in the 275-seat national assembly will be distributed by proportional representation.

The system, chosen with United Nations help, is designed to encourage the formation of alliances and coalitions that try to appeal across Iraq's spread of ethnic and religious groups.

(China Daily December 21, 2004)