{"id":139208,"date":"2018-06-10T20:12:02","date_gmt":"2018-06-10T20:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/iraq-election-fire-hits-baghdad-ballots-ahead-of-recount\/"},"modified":"2018-06-10T20:12:02","modified_gmt":"2018-06-10T20:12:02","slug":"iraq-election-fire-hits-baghdad-ballots-ahead-of-recount","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/iraq-election-fire-hits-baghdad-ballots-ahead-of-recount\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraq election: Fire hits Baghdad ballots ahead of recount"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure>             <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/images\/ic\/720x405\/p069nyft.jpg\"\/>Media playback is unsupported on your device<figcaption>Media captionIt is not clear if voting papers have been destroyed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"caps\">A fire has hit Iraq&#039;s biggest ballot paper storage depot ahead of a recount.<\/p>\n<p>Votes for the eastern district of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, were being held in the building. It is not clear if any were destroyed or what caused the fire. <\/p>\n<p>Last month&#039;s legislative elections were won by an alliance headed by the populist Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr. <\/p>\n<p>Amid allegations fraud, the outgoing parliament ordered a recount of about 10 million votes. It is unclear if this may affect the outcome.<\/p>\n<p>Firefighters have been attempting to control the fire at the storage site, which housed ballot boxes of the al-Rusafa district in the east of Baghdad.<\/p>\n<p>An interior ministry spokesman told the Reuters news agency that the blaze had destroyed some documents and equipment, but efforts were being made to stop it from affecting ballot boxes.<\/p>\n<p>He said the blaze had been confined to one of the four warehouses.<\/p>\n<p>However, Baghdad province council member Mohamed al-Rabeei told Reuters that &quot;all the boxes and papers have burned&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>Iraqi authorities have not commented on whether they think the blaze was caused deliberately.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Iraq country profile<\/li>\n<li>Arms cache blasts destroy Baghdad mosque<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>On Tuesday, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi warned that security agencies had evidence of &quot;unprecedented&quot; violations during the elections. <\/p>\n<p>He said the main issue was with the electronic vote-counting machines that were used for the first time on 12 May.<\/p>\n<p>The outgoing speaker of the Iraqi parliament has said the election should be repeated as a result of the fire.<\/p>\n<p>Salim al-Jabouri, who lost his seat in May&#039;s election, said the fire was &quot;a deliberate act, a planned crime, aimed at hiding instances of fraud and manipulation of votes&quot;.<\/p>\n<figure>                                                                                                       Image copyright                  Reuters<figcaption>Image caption                                      Mr Sadr - who once led a militia which fought occupying US troops - led an alliance that won the most votes                              <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Mr Sadr&#039;s nationalist grouping formed an alliance with a number of secular parties.<\/p>\n<p>It won 54 of the 328 seats in parliament - making it the largest bloc in the post election landscape.<\/p>\n<p>The cleric, who has ruled himself out of becoming Iraq&#039;s prime minister, once led a militia which once fought US troops.<\/p>\n<p>One of Mr Sadr&#039;s aides, Dhiaa al-Asadi, said on Twitter (in Arabic) that he thought the fire was carried out &quot;to cancel the election or destroy the stuffed ballots counted amongst the results&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>A bloc linked to Iranian-backed paramilitaries that have battled the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) over the past four years came second with 47 seats.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Abadi&#039;s alliance came third with 42 seats.<\/p>\n<p>The election, the first held since the government declared victory over IS in December, saw a turnout of 44.5% - much lower than in previous polls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Media playback is unsupported on your deviceMedia captionIt is not clear if voting papers have been destroyed A fire has hit Iraq&#039;s biggest ballot paper storage depot ahead of a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":139209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}