3 May 2014

The Election Commission announced today that more than 800 ballot boxes have been transported from the Ayn Al-Asad military base in Al-Baghdadi to the Baghdad International Fair under stringent observation by the Election Commission, amid fears expressed by the participating political parties and blocs. The fallout from the balloting process has been in the form of claims and accusations of fraud and forgery between the competing political entities; as of right now the Commission has announced that it has received at least 30 complaints with regard to vote-rigging, having allocated three days for such complaints to be submitted from the time of the end of voting. Everybody is now awaiting the outcome of the balloting; some sources have indicated that some of the smaller political entities which had played a minor role in previous governments have now won the majority of Anbar's seats, with the larger more influential blocs have had some setbacks. The final outcome will be announced either in the governorate or in Baghdad.

The security situation in both Ramadi and Fallujah is still difficult.

Last night, a car-bomb was detonated in central Ramadi, following several days of the most violent clashes to date. Some widely-dispersed but violent clashes are still underway in the city's southern sectors; some residential districts have been hit by both artillery and aerial bombardment, even in the districts that have enjoyed a period of relative calm following the re-opening of their police stations.

In Fallujah, a source at the Fallujah General Hospital announced that two civilians were killed and 7 were wounded as a result of the indiscriminate shelling that has targeted a number of the city's residential districts.

Meanwhile, observers of local developments are expecting that the continuing water flow will engulf half of Fallujah within the next few days unless a solution is found, now that the Euphrates flood waters have reached Abu Ghraib, causing widespread damage and destruction over vast tracts of agricultural land; at least 10,000 farmers and peasants have abandoned their fields and have sought refuge in other less-threatened areas. This critical situation come as a result of the gunmen's re-occupation of the Fallujah barrage and their closing of the sluice gates, resulting in some of Baghdad's outlying residential districts, as well as most of Fallujah being threatened by the ever-rising flood waters, and are expected to be under water within 10 days if the situation  remains as it is now.