Suicide bombing near ballot box warehouse store in Kirkuk kills one, wounds 19 , days before recount

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A suicide bombing Sunday targeting a warehouse in Kirkuk where ballot boxes from Iraq‌s May elections were stored  killed one, wounded 19 people, days before a vote recount, a security source said.

Iraq‌s parliamentary election in May was clouded by allegations of fraud. On Saturday a judges‌ panel announced that a recount of votes mandated by the Iraqi parliament and the courts was to kick off on Tuesday, starting with Kirkuk.

The driver detonated the vehicle before reaching the entrance of the warehouse after officers guarding the facility opened fire, the police sources said.

Shi‌ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr‌s electoral list came first in the national election which saw a historically low turnout. After weeks of negotiations on forming a government, Sadr formed an alliance with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, whose electoral list came third and with second-placed Iran ally Hadi al-Amiri‌s bloc.

In early June, a storage site holding half of Baghdad‌s ballot boxes went up in flames in an incident Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi described as a “plot to harm the nation and its democracy”.