Special Voting begins in Iraq

BAGHDAD, March 4 - War torn nation Iraq is on a special voting on Thursday, security forces, hospital patients and prisoners go to polling stations to cast their ballots for the parliamentary election that takes place on Sunday.The voting begins wee hours on Thursday among soldiers, police, doctors, patients, hospital staff and prisoners.Iraq has 19 million voters which includes 1.4 million living abroad in 16 countries, are eligible to vote for the 325-seat Iraq's Council of Representatives with some 6,300 candidates.

Election is regarded very important for the country's national reconciliation and political process and struggling to improve security situation in the past few years,planned full withdrawal of U.S troops at the end of 2011. With at least 32 people killed and 42 wounded in three serial suicide attacks,in the central Iraqi city of Baquba just days before parliamentary elections.The first attack reportedly took at about 09.30 a.m. (06.30 GMT) on Wednesday near a government building, when a suicide bomber detonated the explosives inside his car.Another car bomb exploded outside the provincial council's headquarters within minutes. A third suicide bomber blew himself up near a local hospital, to which the wounded were taken.The TV channel said a local police chief was the target of the third suicide bombing.
"The bomber followed crowds of the wounded into the hospital and detonated himself in an effort to get the police chief as well," Al Jazeera's correspondent said.

The police chief, Major-General Abdul Hussein al-Shimmari, reportedly escaped unharmed, but a number of his security guards were wounded.The attacks came amid heightened security across the country ahead of Sunday's polls, posing a threat to peaceful intentions of U.S. President Barack Obama, who has pledged to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from the country by the end of August if the elections go well.