Plans were unveiled here to deploy 100,000 Iraqi police and soldiers to stave off a bloodbath on election day, as US President George W. Bush said polls would go on as scheduled on January 30.
The deadly violence came as battles between US troops and Iraqi insurgents in the northern city of Mosul killed at least 26, including a US soldier, and 30 people died when a booby-trapped house in Baghdad exploded. A dozen Iraqi deaths Thursday brought the three-day toll to well over 100.
The grim business of hostage taking again surfaced, with two Lebanese businessmen kidnapped in an upmarket neighborhood of Baghdad late Wednesday.
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