Iraqi Vote Results Will Be Delayed

Iraqi officials said Wednesday that they must recount votes from about 300 ballot boxes because of discrepancies, delaying final parliamentary election results. Hundreds of other ballots were declared invalid because of tampering allegations.

News of the election problems came as the U.S. military announced the deaths of three more American soldiers in postelection violence.

One soldier was killed and another wounded Wednesday in an ambush near Balad, about 50 miles north of the capital, the U.S. military said.

Another soldier was found dead of a gunshot wound Tuesday at a major U.S. base in Balad, and a third was killed Sunday while on patrol in Mosul, the military said in separate announcements Wednesday. More than 1,450 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war in March 2003.

This morning, a car bomb killed three Iraqi bystanders and injured four others in Tahrir Square in central Baghdad, said a police spokesman who didn’t want to be identified. He said the bomber apparently was hoping to hit an American convoy.

The spokesman also said a car bomb hit an Iraqi police convoy in Salman Pak, south of the capital, injuring five officers.

Iraqi officials had promised final results from the elections by today, the end of the Iraqi workweek.

On Wednesday, however, election commission spokesman Farid Ayar said the deadline would not be met because of the recount.

Allegations of voting irregularities, especially around the tense northern city of Mosul, have complicated the count. Some leading Sunni Arab and Christian politicians alleged that thousands of their supporters were denied the right to vote.

Commission official Adil Lami said the ballots in 40 boxes and 250 bags would not be counted. Some of the boxes were not those approved by the commission, and some others were improperly sealed, he said.