BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Treading cautiously on shattered glass and debris, Iraqi election worker Ali Hamza tried his best to hide his nerves Tuesday after a grenade hit the kindergarten where he is setting up a polling station.
With 12 days to go until the election, the school, a major center for voter registration in Basra, Iraq's mostly Shi'ite second city, was deserted ? except for police guarding the rooftop and patrolling the grounds.
Yasamin Kindergarten was one of three schools, all serving as polling places, to have been hit in Basra late Sunday. Injuries were few and damage was moderate, but the attacks sent a chilling message to voters in the southern port city.
"The terrorists want to intimidate us," Hamza, 23, said as he surveyed a scorched mural of Alice in Wonderland on the wall that bore the brunt of the blasts. "We must keep up our guard."
Violence has been concentrated in Baghdad and the Sunni heartlands to the north and west. But Sunni insurgents have shown their ability to strike in the calmer south, where majority Shi'ites ? marginalised under Saddam Hussein ? support the election as a chance to cement their new power.
The latest attacks in Basra are widely seen as escalating a campaign by minority Sunni militants to scare voters away from the polls as well as a warning of a possible bloodbath if Shi'ites defy them and turn out in large numbers on Jan. 30.
Some leaders of the Sunni minority, privileged under Saddam, are calling for an election boycott. They say violence will stop Sunnis voting and hand Shi'ites an exaggerated majority.
THREATS, KIDNAPPINGS, KILLINGS
Thousands of election workers find themselves in the line of fire. They perform vital tasks, including signing up voters, installing ballot boxes, handing out leaflets and educating people about a process not seen in Iraq for decades.
Hundreds have been threatened, kidnapped or killed.
Faja al-Edany, 46, a former chemical engineer who heads the election commission in Basra's neighboring Muthanna province, says she cannot even go out shopping without two bodyguards.
"This is the price of democracy," she said.
In even more violent areas, the situation is so bad that some election workers do not tell even friends and family what they do. Scores have quit after receiving death threats.
Those who stay give a mixture of reasons. Many are inspired by a chance to play a role in what Iraq's interim government says will be the first free election since the 1950s.
Shi'ite activists often say they are responding to calls from their religious leaders for orderly elections that will allow the 60-percent Shi'ite majority to hold political sway.
Election workers also earn $200 a month, an especially strong incentive in Basra, where many of the two million inhabitants live in slums crisscrossed by streams of raw sewage.
SAFETY FEARS
"I truly want to help my people. But the money is also very good," said Ali Hamza at the Yasamin kindergarten.
His family worries about his safety and the former taxi driver admits he too is sometimes afraid. But says he has confidence in Iraqi security services to safeguard the poll and prevent suicide attacks and car bombings.
Hundreds of British army reinforcements are also coming in to Basra this week to beef up election security.
Basra Governor Hassan al-Rashid said a traffic ban would be imposed near polling centers, which would be protected by an inner ring of police and an outer ring of National Guards. British rapid-reaction teams would be deployed if necessary.
Still, many Iraqis question how their security forces can protect voters when they hardly can protect themselves.
At the school, policemen who battled two carloads of grenade-throwing insurgents Sunday night complained that their foes had more firepower than them.
The police carried old Kalashnikov AK-47s, some held together with tape, and only a few wore body armor, usually empty of the plates needed to stop a bullet.
"We are training to stop attacks on election day and God willing we will succeed," said policeman Hamoud Rawad, 23.
"But why won't the British give us proper equipment?"
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