IRAQ: US and Iraqi forces have stepped up security across Iraq and are preparing to impose an overnight curfew in an effort to reduce insurgent attacks aimed at wrecking tomorrow's constitutional referendum.
One day after Iraqi politicians approved a set of last-minute amendments to the constitution without a vote, sealing a compromise designed to win minority Sunni Arab support for the charter, cities such as Baghdad were unusually quiet as a four-day national holiday began, closing government offices and schools ahead of the vote.
A curfew was also being imposed, and today the country's borders will be closed and all travel in its provinces stopped.
Working under cover of darkness, US and Iraqi forces continued to raid suspected militant safe houses in cities such as Baghdad, and to build 15m (4ft) concrete barriers topped with concertina wire in front of polling places such as schools.
The walls are designed to protect the areas from bombing by insurgents.
Police went even further in Mosul, a city northwest of Baghdad that has suffered many militant attacks, imposing a ban on Wednesday night on all civilian vehicles.
A US soldier was killed yesterday when a roadside bomb hit his combat patrol near Dujail, 80km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, the military said.
The death brought to 1,965 the number of US service members killed since the beginning of the war in 2003.
A car bomb and a roadside bomb killed two soldiers and two policemen in two separate attacks in the northern city of Kirkuk, police said.
Two attacks damaged a Sunni group's offices in Falluja after the Iraqi Islamic Party broke ranks and backed the constitution once parliament had made some minor amendments on Wednesday.
In the last 18 days, at least 445 people have been killed in Iraq in militant violence as the insurgents try to scare voters away from the polls. - (Reuters, AP)