Violence in Iraq continued on Saturday, with the drive-by shooting of municipal councillor Abdelmawjud Ahmed Juburi in Hawijah, west of Kirkuk, police Colonel Ahmed al-Obeidi said. A seven-year-old child was also killed and two others wounded by mortar fire in a nearby village, he added.
In western Baghdad, several gunmen killed police Captain Hakki Ismail, an interior ministry source reported.
Meanwhile, US forces have wrapped up one of four western Iraqi offensives aimed at pinning down al Qaeda-linked insurgents a week before the population votes in a bitterly divisive constitutional referendum.
The US military said on Saturday its troops had finished a six-day sweep in the western, Sunni dominated Al-Anbar province, killing "more than 50 al Qaeda terrorists."
Roughly 1,000 marines, soldiers and sailors ended Operation Iron Fist late Thursday, a statement said, while another reported that six marines had been killed in the operation.
Iron Fist's goal was to "root out al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq and to disrupt insurgent support systems" in and around Sadah, 20 kilometres east of the Syrian border on the Euphrates River, the statement said. Across Iraq, copies of the proposed constitution were distributed ahead of the October 15 referendum that will pave the way to general elections in December.
In the northern Kurdish province of Arbil, local official Nuzad Barzani said Kurdish-language drafts of the constitution were being released through all available channels.
"We have asked newspapers, radios and television stations close to Kurdish political parties to publish the document" as part of an information campaign designed to reach those in remote areas, he said.
In the Baghdad neighbourhood of Karradah, an Iraqi official said the document was being handed out along with food rations.
"Men ask for the constitution before the sugar. Woman want sugar and rice first," Ibrahim Hassan Bahadli noted.
"Some people read the constitution in the street, while others are afraid and hide it in their bags." Roughly 15.7 million voters are eligible to vote on the constitution out of Iraq's total population of 26 million.
But while Kurds and many Shias were expected to approve the proposed basic law, support is weak among Sunnis who fear its federalist foundation could leave them bereft of oil resources found in northern and southern Iraq.
Middle East specialist Juan Cole at the University of Michigan also voiced doubts about the constitution's "many weaknesses".
Besides leaving some crucial issues for subsequent parliaments to decide, he pointed to "key contradictions between civil and Islamic law".
"Can you have freedom of speech if blasphemy can be prosecuted?" he asked.
Furthermore, a directive posted on Saturday inside Baghdad's heavily protected Green Zone and confirmed by an interior ministry source listed several nation-wide measures to ensure security during the referendum.
They include a curfew from October 13-17 the hours of which were not specified, partial closures of international and provincial borders, as well as air and sea ports and a ban on everyone but security forces carrying weapons.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said an intercepted letter from al Qaeda's number two to its top militant in Iraq revealed concern over the impact on Arab opinion of beheadings and videotaped executions.
Ayman Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's second in command, also complained about communications, unity of command and funding problems to the extent that he asked Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al Qaeda leader in Iraq, for money, Whitman said.
Early Saturday, an audiotape attributed to Zarqawi claimed that Islam permits the killing of "infidel" civilians.
"In Islam, making the difference is not based on civilians and military, but on the basis of Muslims and infidels," said the voice on the tape, broadcast on the Internet.
"The Muslim's blood cannot be spilled whatever his work or place, while spilling the blood of the infidel, whatever his work or place, is authorised if he is not trustworthy," said the tape, whose authenticity could not be verified.