Emigrants vote in Iraq elections

Voting abroad began first in Australia on Tuesday, where up to 20,000 registered Iraqi voters live.

They are part of a group of 1.5 million voters living outside Iraq who will cast ballots at polling centres in 15 countries, including the United States, Canada and the Netherlands.

The expatriates will help elect the 275-member National Assembly, which will legislate in the coming four years and choose the first fully constitutional government in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's government in 2003.

"I hope this leads to democracy in Iraq and freedom for its people," said Mawahib Muhammad, 32, a college student and a Shia Muslim from southern Iraq who cast her ballot at a London station.

Iraqis living in France were being asked to go to Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, to cast their ballots.

Iraqis living in Denmark and southern Sweden cast ballots in Copenhagen amid heavy security.

Iraqis who lined up to vote in Berlin seemed jovial but cautiously optimistic.

Many of the 50 or so who waited outside a makeshift security checkpoint in the loading dock of a former mail distribution centre were part of a group from Poland that had chartered a bus to make the nine-and-a-half-hour journey to Berlin on Monday.

Politician killed

A leading Sunni Muslim Arab politician has been shot and killed in Iraq two days before the nation votes for a new parliament.

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