Smoke rises from a storage site in Baghdad, housing ballot boxes from Iraq's May parliamentary election, Iraq June 10, 2018. REUTERS/Khalid al-Mousily /File Photo
Reuters: After ballot box fire, Iraqi cleric Sadr warns of civil war
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr urged Iraqis on Monday to unite rather than squabble over a possible rerun of the election his bloc won last month, a message apparently meant to defuse political tension after a ballot box storage depot caught fire.
Certain parties are trying to drag Iraq into civil war, Sadr said, adding that he would not participate in one.
Parliament has mandated a manual recount of the election in which a number of parties alleged fraud. A storage site holding half of Baghdad’s ballot boxes went up in flames on Sunday in what Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi denounced as a “plot to harm the nation and its democracy”.
An Iraqi court ordered the arrest of four people accused of setting fire to the storage site, state television reported. Three of them were policemen and one an employee of the Independent High Elections Commission.
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WNU Editor: Trying to deliberately burn the ballot boxes from the last election is not only a clear attempt to undermine the electoral process, but also to de-legitimize the winners.
