Insurgents have killed 21 Iraqis and two US soldiers in recent assaults, showing there has been no respite in the fight against US-led forces and their allies since Sunday's election. The Army of Ansar al-Sunna posted a video on its Web site on Saturday showing seven National Guards captured in an ambush near Baghdad on Thursday being shot as they knelt blindfolded. Meanwhile, the Islamic Army in Iraq said in an Internet statement it had killed three policemen captured after the same attack. The video did not show the killings, but had images of the hostages in tears.
"After they admitted that they worked with occupation forces ... God's just sentence was carried out against them," the group said in a statement.
Insurgents attacked the police convoy on Thursday. Police said two policemen were killed, 14 wounded and 16 missing.
While attacks by insurgents against foreign and Iraqi forces have slowed since the election, they have not ceased during a week when electoral officials have been busy counting ballots.
"You should not co-operate with the new Iraqi government," one of the hostages said on Ansar al-Sunna's video, dated February 4.
The count so far puts a religious Shia coalition in the lead with two thirds of the poll, based on results from 35 percent of voting centres.
Buoyed by the strong showing, a top Shia official told Reuters the Shia alliance would insist on the job of prime minister in the new government.
The post is now held by Iyad Allawi, whose bloc is in second place. But this could change as votes from the Kurdish-dominated north are counted, reducing his chances of keeping his job as a compromise candidate.
"Shias want the prime ministership, we are insisting on it and will not give it up," said Deputy Foreign Minister Hamed al-Bayati, who is a senior official in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
SCIRI is a key player in the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shia bloc which has polled 2.2 million of the 3.3 million votes counted so far from 10 of 18 provinces.
Allawi's Iraqi List has about 18 percent, but the Kurds are still awaiting the results in their three northern provinces, where turnout was high and is expected to secure them a powerful voice in the new 275-seat National Assembly.
The Electoral Commission said the final results would be ready within the next few days and at the latest by February 10. But spokesman Farid Ayar warned there would then be nine days to resolve complaints before the results were certified.
VIOLENCE: As violence continued unchecked, police said four Iraqi soldiers were killed by a bomb in the southern city of Basra, which has been relatively peaceful.
Four other Iraqi servicemen died in three separate incidents in Samarra in the restive Sunni triangle region north of Baghdad, hospital sources and the Iraqi military said.
A tribal leader was killed on Saturday during clashes between insurgents and US troops near Ramadi.
"Three civilians were killed and five wounded during clashes between US troops and rebels in the Tamim region", west of Ramadi, police Lieutenant Ahmed al-Dulaimi said.
One of the victims was Latif Rishawi, a leader of the Albu Risha Sunni tribe in Al-Anbar, of which Ramadi is the provincial capital, the officer said.
Dead bodies of two Iraqi soldiers were also found in the city, said another police officer, who requested anonymity.
Civilian casualties also rose. Two children playing outside their home were killed when a landmine exploded, and a local government official was assassinated in a drive-by shooting in the Adel area in western Baghdad.
The US army said two US soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb while patrolling in armoured Humvees near Baiji, north of Tikrit, on Friday. Four other soldiers were wounded.
In the first abduction of a foreigner since the poll, an Italian reporter was snatched from the street on Friday while she was interviewing people near Baghdad University.
A little-known Iraqi group, the Islamic Jihad Organisation, said in a Web statement it had taken Giuliana Sgrena hostage.
It set a 72-hour deadline for Italy to remove its nearly 3,000 troops from Iraq but did not make a specific threat to kill her. It was not possible to verify the statement.
A friend of Sgrena's who is also in Iraq said she received a call on Saturday from Sgrena's telephone but it was unclear who was at the other end of the line.
Sgrena is the eighth Italian to be kidnapped in Iraq and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Italy was working to secure her release.
More than 120 foreigners have been kidnapped in the country in the past year and about a third of them killed.
Iraq's leading Sunni religious authority on Saturday made its participation in the upcoming constitution-drafting process conditional on the announcement of a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops.
The Committee of Muslim Scholars' spokesman, Omar Ragheb, was speaking to the press after its chairman Hareth al-Dari met UN secretary-general Kofi Annan's special envoy in Iraq, Ashraf Qazi.
"Qazi asked the Committee to take part in drafting the constitution. We told him that we had conditions and that we would discuss them with the parties that boycotted the polls and would put forward a common stance," he said.
"These demands focus on reaching a consensus with all political parties on a withdrawal of foreign forces," Ragheb said.
The Committee had questioned the legitimacy of the elections, which were widely hailed in Iraq and abroad as a major step in the country's rocky road to democracy and independence.
The spokesman of the organisation, which is also known as the Ulema Committee and was one of the leading forces that opposed last Sunday's general elections, hinted that the influential grouping of clerics could then weigh on the insurgency to end the bloodshed which has marred Iraq's reconstruction.
"Then, the country's elders will tell the resistance: 'No need to spill more blood'," Ragheb said.
According to many observers, much of the success of the post-election period, during which parliament will have to draft a permanent constitution for the country, will depend on the level of involvement of the Sunni community.
Turnout in the landmark January 30 elections was the lowest in Iraq's Sunni areas, either out of fear of reprisals from extremist Sunni Arab groups or because of calls by the Muslim Scholars and other Sunni organisations for a boycott of the polls.
Qazi described his meeting with Muslim Scholars as "very positive".
As the final results of Sunday's elections have yet to be announced, the United Nations engaged in discussions with all parties in a bid to rope in as much participation as possible in the constitution-drafting process.
Qazi has already met with Mohsen Abdel Hamid, who heads the Iraqi Islamic Party, a leading Sunni Arab political party that presented a list in the landmark polls before pulling out of the race.
The Committee of Muslim Scholars "is not against national reconciliation... but so far no government representative has contacted us," Ragheb said.
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