Iraqi constitution draft to be voted on next week

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- On Thursday, Iraqis began picking up copies of the draft constitution they will vote on next week, after the country's Shiite-led parliament ended a bitter dispute with Sunni legislators about how the referendum will be conducted.\nLamia Dhyab picked up her copy at the small shop where she presents her ration card in south Baghdad each month to get government-subsidized food for her family.\n"We are going to read the draft constitution. If we like it, we will vote yes. If we don't, we'll say no," said Dhyab, who was wearing a chador, the traditional head-to-toe black outfit Muslim females often wear.\nUnder U.S. and U.N. pressure, parliament Wednesday reversed its last-minute electoral law changes, which would have ensured passage of the new constitution in the Oct. 15 referendum, but which the United Nations called unfair.\nSunni Arab leaders, who had threatened a boycott because of the changes, said they were satisfied with Wednesday's reversal and are now mobilizing to defeat the charter at the polls. Some warned they could still call a boycott to protest major U.S. offensives launched over the past week in western Iraq, the Sunni heartland.\nA suicide car bomb hit a police patrol near the Oil Ministry on Thursday, killing nine Iraqis and wounding nine, police said. The bomb exploded about 400 yards from the ministry, said police Capt. Nabil Abdul Qadir. The dead included five policemen and four civilians.\nA roadside bomb hit a U.S. Army patrol in Baghdad on Thursday, killing one soldier, the military said. The attack raised the number of U.S. military members who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003 to at least 1,944, according to an Associated Press count.\nA suicide car bomb also exploded Thursday near a four-car convoy of foreign private security contractors in eastern Baghdad, killing three Iraqi bystanders, police said.\nAt least 271 people have been killed by insurgents in Iraq in the past 11 days.\nOn Wednesday, a bomb exploded at the entrance of a Shiite mosque in Hillah, a city south of Baghdad, killing at least 25 and wounding 93, as hundreds of worshippers gathered there for prayers at the start of the Islamic month of Ramadan and for the funeral of a man killed two days ago in a bomb blast at his restaurant.\nIt was the latest in a string of insurgent attacks aimed at wrecking the referendum. Al-Qaida in Iraq, which has declared "all-out war" on Shiites, has called for stepped-up violence during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month now under way.\nInsurgents also bombed an aboveground pipeline near the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk early Thursday. The pipeline connects oil fields with Kirkuk's refineries, said police Capt. Farhad Talabani.\nThousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops were waging two major offensives in western Iraq, the Sunni heartland, in an attempt to put down insurgents ahead of the vote.\nAt least 42 insurgents have been killed in the Iron Fist offensive, which began Saturday near the Syrian border. At least four U.S. servicemen have died in Iron Fist and River Gate, the offensives that began further to the east Saturday, the U.S. military said.