Saturday, 31 January 2009
Mortar shells have fallen near a voting station as Iraq stages its first elections since 2005.
A massive security operation is in place for the local council ballot.
It is seen as a vital test-run before a full parliamentary poll later this year.
Nobody was hurt in the attack which happened in Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit.
Shoe monument in Iraq demolished (click here)
Baghdad - A sculpture of an enormous shoe erected in honour of the Iraqi reporter who hurled his shoes at then-US president George W Bush in December, was taken down on Friday.
The huge bronze-coloured sculpture, made of fiberglass, was erected at an orphanage complex in the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit on Thursday.
The head of the Childhood organisation, which the orphanage belongs to, said that the Provincial Joint Coordination Centre told her to take the structure down immediately.
"I did take the shoe down immediately and destroyed it; and I did not ask why," Shahah Daham, the head of the charity organisation, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
