But Shia list leaders insist they swept the board in much of southern Iraq.Mr Othman still thinks it would have been better if the poll had been delayed. Iyad Allawi, Iraq's interim Prime Minister, called for unity yesterday but in the wake of the election for the National Assembly his countrymen remain deeply divided along religious and ethnic faultlines. The Kurds, themselves mostly Sunni, and the Shia have difficulty in agreeing common policies.Mr Attiyah said: "If the Shia list has 140 seats, the Kurds 65 to 70 and Allawi with most of the rest it will not be good news. It would also help if the smaller parties win votes because then there will have to be compromises in sharing power."It would be better, Mr Attiyah said, if the Shia list got 70 to 75 seats, Mr Allawi 60 to 65 , the Kurds 60 to 65 and the rest to smaller groups,. The three big winners are expected to be the Kurds, the Iyad Allawi list, which was expected to attract many secular voters, and the so-called Shia list, created under the auspices of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shia spiritual leader.Ghassan Attiyah, a political scientist and writer, said it would be highly polarising if the Shia and the Kurds were dominant This would further alienate the Sunnis. He said: "If the new government is a photocopy of the old one, then that is not so good.
The people expect change."The make-up of the 275-member assembly will take time to establish. In the election, Iraq was treated as one constituency in which each party that submitted a slate of candidates will be allocated seats in proportion to the percentage of the vote it received. Elsewhere in Gaza, Israeli troops found and defused a roadside bomb. The Israeli military said it checked the claims and found two cases in which soldiers opened fire, but neither was in the area where the girl was shot. "According to our examination, the girl apparently was not shot by Israeli army gunfire," the military spokesman's office said.. UN officials said it was the fifth incident in two years in which children had been killed at Gaza schools. The Israelis were anxious to avoid an escalation a few hours before security chiefs from both sides were to meet in Tel Aviv and cement the ceasefire, but Hamas retaliated by launching five mortar rounds at nearby settlements.
Two hit Neveh Dekalim, the regional centre, causing damage to one home.On Sunday night, soldiers shot and killed a 65-year-old man who entered an Israeli no-go area near the Egyptian border. Because of the overcrowded conditions, they study on a two-shift system. The shooting happened during a change of shifts.The school has been hit many times over the past four years, but yesterday's shooting was the first death there. "The children scattered in all directions."Palestinian doctors said Norhan was shot in the head and was dead on arrival at hospital. Another girl, Aysha el-Khatib, aged seven, was wounded in the hand Bullets also broke school windows. Yousef Ibrahim, a local human rights activist, said the shooting was unprovoked.Plainly embarrassed Israeli military sources said they knew of no shooting in the area at the time.
