Al-Qaida in Iraq denied in an Internet statement Saturday that it had intentionally curbed violence during this week's elections, saying it carried out multiple attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces. Five militant groups including the al-Qaida affiliate had issued a statement a day before Thursday's vote that condemned the elections but stopped short of threatening to attack polling stations. And election violence was low in what was perceived as an attempt to avoid harming members of the Sunni Arab community, who voted in large numbers. The turnout bolstered U.S. hopes that the polls would produce a broad-based government capable of ending daily violence.There were still several attacks across the country. The U.S. military said Thursday that a mortar shell exploded near Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone as polls opened, slightly wounding two civilians and a U.S. Marine. Mortar attacks on polling stations in the northern city of Tal Afar and western Euphrates River valley town of Parwana killed six people, while a grenade killed a school guard near a voting site in the northern city of Mosul.
Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed Saturday that it attacked numerous locations in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, and conducted operations in Baghdad and Mosul, and in Anbar and Diyala provinces. The militant Ansar al-Sunnah Army, which has ties to al-Qaida in Iraq, issued a statement on the same Web site Saturday suggesting it halted operations during Thursday's polls but resumed them with a purported attack on a U.S. Humvee in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad.