BAGHDAD, Dec 14: Iraq ground to a halt on Wednesday with sweeping security measures enforced on the eve of a landmark election aimed at restoring full sovereignty and stability to the turbulent country.

With the country on high alert, Al Qaeda in Iraq pledged a new offensive against the political process, following US warnings of hiked violence.

Around 15.5 million voters are called to the polls on Thursday to elect 275 MPs for four-year term. The MPs will approve a new government designed to further the transition to democracy and eventually allow thousands of US-led forces to withdraw.

A total 7,655 candidates are running for office.

But a purported Al Qaeda statement on the Internet charged that a “blessed conquest” had been launched to “shake up the bastions of non-believers and apostates and to ruin the ‘democratic’ wedding of heresy and immorality”.

The group, blamed for some of the worst attacks in Iraq, said its offensive would focus on Baghdad, the northern city of Mosul and the Sunni-dominated provinces of Al-Anbar, Diyala and Salaheddin.

Two policemen were killed in a bomb attack against a patrol in the centre of the mixed Sunni Arab and Kurdish city of Mosul.

But calm descended over Baghdad with banks, schools and shops shut, though pick-up trucks mounted with machine-guns provided a reminder of the dogged insurgency.

President Jalal Talabani urged Iraqis to make the country’s general election a day of “national unity” and “a triumph over terrorism”.

He said he was delighted that a parliament would be freely elected and he congratulated the people on their “determination to build a democratic, federal and united Iraq”.

Expatriates in 15 countries from Australia to Europe, North America and the Middle East are already casting their ballots in a three-day process that began on Tuesday, with voting completed in Iraqi hospitals and prisons on Monday.

Iraqi and US officials are hoping the first full-term legislature since the 2003 invasion to oust Saddam Hussein will draw disaffected Sunni Arabs back into politics and undermine support for the insurgency.—AFP