BAGHDAD, Jan 24 (AFP) - Iraq claimed Monday it had netted an aide to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who was plotting election day attacks as Al-Qaeda's Iraq supremo continued his war on the vote with a deadly car bombing in Baghdad.
The government said Iraqi security forces had arrested Zarqawi lieutenant Sami Mohammad Said al-Jaf, also known as Abu Omar al-Kurdi, blamed for a string of deadly attacks in the country.
It said Kurdi was responsible for 32 attacks, including the devastating 2003 bombing of the Baghdad UN headquarters which left 22 people dead, including the world body's chief representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.
The government also said it had arrested Zarqawi's propaganda mastermind, Hassan al-Dulaimi, who confessed Kurdi had been plotting attacks on polling centres to disrupt Sunday's vote.
In custody, Kurdi admitted to a string of attacks in August 2003, including the UN bombing, the assassination of Shiite leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim in Najaf and the truck bombing of the Jordan embassy, it said.
Those bloody attacks were the first real statement of purpose by an insurgency that would come to be a thorn in the side of the defunct US-led occupation of Iraq.
In an audiotape message posted on an Islamist website on Sunday, Zarqawi -- the most wanted man in Iraq with a 25 million dollar price on his head -- declared all-out war on the elections he considers un-Islamic and also singled out the country's Shiite majority.
His network claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb attack Monday on a checkpoint near Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's party headquarters in Baghdad that left two dead and 10 wounded.
Zarqawi's organisation also claimed Sunday it had kidnapped and killed a leading candidate on Allawi's list for the elections, which will choose a new national assembly as well as provincial councils and a Kurdish assembly.
In the latest delivery of the Zarqawi network's grisly videos, an Egyptian driver who worked for a Kuwaiti firm was shown being shot dead execution style in broad daylight on an Iraqi street.
A purported voice recording by Zarqawi on Sunday said the January 30 polls were a "wicked trap aimed at putting the Rafidha (a derogatory term for Shiite Muslims) in the seat of power in Iraq."
It was the second inflamatory message from Osama bin Laden's anointed "emir" in Iraq since Thursday as he sought to maximize violence among the country's fractious mix of Shiites and Sunnis ahead of the vote.
Rebels rallied to Zarqawi's call over the weekend as car bombs tore apart a Shiite mosque and wedding party in the Baghdad region on Saturday, killing nearly 30 people.
But Allawi remained upbeat the elections and predicted that Iraqis would turn out en masse to vote in the country's first multi-party elections in half a century and the first since Saddam Hussein was toppled in April 2003.
"The people will keep marching towards the elections regardless of the challenges. I don't think that a small group of criminals and killers will succeed in stopping life in Iraq," he told reporters Monday.
Voter turnout is expectedly to be extremely low in Iraq's restive Sunni provinces, as Sunni parties have called for a boycott of the vote and extremist insurgent groups have threatened those who take part in the electoral process.
Allawi nevertheless insisted that the door remained open for Sunni parties to take in the country's political life after the elections.
Iraqi Finance Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi said an additional threat looming over Sunday's ballot was a risk of fraud in areas where a sufficient number of monitors could not be dispatched.
"We cannot go to all the regions in Iraq to monitor (the voting), and we are seriously afraid that fraud might take place," he told reporters.
Despite the chaos, the US military continued its nationwide sweep for suspects, netting over 120 since Saturday.
The Iraqi authorities also continued to unveil security measures and the police chief in Najaf announced a special set-up for the holy Shiite city, amid fears of pre-election violence against the majority community.
Meanwhile, eight Chinese hostages who were handed back to the Chinese authorities in Baghdad headed back to their country after five-day ordeal.
The eight men, labourers aged 18 to 40, were kidnapped Tuesday on their way home from a construction project.

01/24/2005 13:52 GMT - AFP