Ammar Ahmed plays with his sons at their house at a compound for displaced people in Baghdad’s southeastern Zaafaraniyah district, on Wednesday. An estimated 1.55 million people are currently displaced inside Iraq due to sectarian violence that threatened their lives. — AP

BAGHDAD — Security concerns sparked by anti-government rallies in mostly-Sunni areas of Iraq in recent weeks could hamper provincial polls due in April, a top election official said on Wednesday.



Muqdad Al-Sharifi, the chief electoral officer of Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), also told reporters that 131 candidates had been barred from the April 20 vote due to their ties to the Baath Party of now-executed dictator Saddam Hussein.



Attacks targeting security forces across Iraq left three policemen and an army officer dead on Wednesday, officials said, amid a spike in unrest as the country grapples with a political crisis. “We have a problem in some provinces where there is a political crisis,” Al-Sharifi said, referring to weeks of demonstrations in north and west Iraq against the alleged targeting of the Sunni community by the country’s Shiite-led authorities.



“The commission is worried about the continuation of this situation ... because it will create problems for the elections,” he said in Baghdad at a joint news conference with UN special envoy Martin Kobler.



Al-Sharifi said IHEC staff in Iraq’s north and west had been sent threatening letters warning them against taking part in the polls. Kobler too said the protests were “of increasing concern”. “I do hope that the demonstrations going on do not impact on the elections,” he said.



Al-Sharifi also said that of a total of 8,224 candidates who had registered to run in the elections, 131 had been barred by a commission charged with filtering out those with ties to Saddam’s Baath Party.



The issue of so-called de-Baathification was extremely controversial during Iraq’s 2010 parliamentary elections, the country’s last set of polls, because those barred accused the commission of disproportionately targeting Sunnis.



But violence continued in Iraq with two policemen being shot dead and three others wounded by gunmen at a checkpoint in the town of Mussayib, south of Baghdad, while one police officer was killed and another hurt by gunfire in the main northern city of Mosul.



North of Baghdad in the town of Tuz Khurmatu, an army lieutenant colonel was killed and another officer was wounded by a roadside bomb while on patrol, officials said.



And in the capital, four people, including one policeman, were wounded by a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol.



No organization has claimed responsibility for the deadly string of attacks. The violence took the death toll since Sunday to 72. —AFP