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Polls closed in Iraq a few minutes ago after 10 hours of voting. The ballot was marred by a few dozen insurgent attacks around the country -- but casualties are remarkably low, and voter turnout (anecdotally at least) seems to be fairly high.

We'll update this thread throughout the day with new developments. Today's news will largely come from non-Iraqi sources: Many Iraqi newspapers suspended publication for the day to allow their staffs time to vote. Here's Al-Rafidayn's statement on the suspension (عربي), for example; As-Sabaah has a banner across its homepage (عربي). So most of today's news comes from Western and pan-Arab news sources.

After a final campaign push today, Iraq's parliamentary campaign season is drawing to a halt, and the Iraqi electoral commission is getting ready for the ballot on March 7.

Voting started today for the disabled, and for soldiers and medical personnel, most of whom will be on duty during the general voting on Sunday. Iraqi newspapers say sandstorms throughout the country didn't disrupt the balloting (عربي).

Government offices and schools have shut down so election officials can prepare polling places. And checkpoints are going up across the country; more than 200,000 police and soldiers will be on duty in Baghdad alone.

Nir Rosen reports from Iraq in The National's weekly Review, and it's worth a read, as is most of Rosen's work. In many ways, today's piece is similar to his April 2009 Review piece: Rosen argues that the Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian war is over, because the Iraqi state is too strong.

There are still militias active in Iraq, and the level of deadly violence would be unacceptable almost anywhere else on Earth. But the fears frequently voiced by foreign analysts and reporters - that the civil war is merely in abeyance, and that sectarian fury could break out again at any moment after a series of deadly attacks, or an unfavourable election result - are overblown.

But you nonetheless see some ominous signs for the future throughout Rosen's piece.

The other big Iraq story this morning, aside from the Moqtada al-Sadr warrant, is a spate of suicide bombings in Diyala province which killed about 30 people.

Two car bombs went off simultaneously this morning, around 9:30 local time, at the provincial government's main building in Baquba (the capital of Diyala) and in a nearby intersection. A third bomber, reportedly wearing a police uniform with the rank of lieutenant, blew himself up at Baquba's main hospital -- as casualties from the first two bombings began arriving for treatment.

It's the middle of the night in Baghdad, so we'll have to wait a few hours for Iraqi reaction, but Nouri al-Maliki unexpectedly decided to reinstate 20,000 former Iraqi officers who got the boot when the U.S. disbanded Iraq's army in 2003.

Maliki did this ten days before the election, so I think it's safe to say he's pandering for votes, particularly Sunni ones. A spokesman for the Iraqiyya coalition seems to share that analysis.

I promised to stop writing about calls for delayed withdrawal in Iraq, so I'll keep this short. But Tom Ricks has a new CNAS policy paper repeating his call for a delayed withdrawal. It's basically a longer version of yesterday's op-ed, with a couple of photos and a graph about coalition troop strength (which contributes nothing to the reader's understanding of current events in Iraq).

I've long believed that folks in Washington who want the U.S. to delay its withdrawal from Iraq are really advocating a long-term U.S. military presence in the country. Their basic argument -- Iraq still has problems, so the U.S. can't leave yet -- creates a slippery slope towards lengthy occupation. Tom Ricks is at least honest about this point in his New York Times op-ed today.

The Washington Post has 600 words of hand-wringing conventional wisdom on its editorial page this morning: Syria is bad, Syria will always be bad, and engagement with Damascus is pointless.

I don't agree with the overall conclusion -- I agree with Andrew Tabler that engagement could bring a meaningful change in U.S.-Syrian relations (though I take issue with many other points in his essay) -- and the editorial also plays loose with the facts. Here's the most egregious example, referring to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

He has promised to check suicide bombers bound for Iraq but has never done so.

I guess Fred Hiatt and the gang over at WaPo don't have access to Lexis-Nexis? Or Google?

A suicide bomber at the provincial government headquarters in Ramadi killed at least 12 people this morning and wounded two dozen more.

The bomber blew himself up at a checkpoint outside the compound; many of the victims were soldiers and police, according to witnesses. A young girl was also among those killed.

The Sunni Awakening program might be officially over -- the Iraqi government is supposed to fold the Awakening militias into the Iraqi government -- but tribes in Anbar province continue to exact vigilante justice on suspected former members of the insurgency.

Many Iraqis released by U.S. forces after being detained for suspected links to Sunni insurgents have been killed by tribes seeking revenge or are being driven back into the arms of al-Qaeda.

Maj. Gen. Tareq Yusuf, a former police chief in Anbar, told Reuters tribes have killed at least 50 former detainees since 2007. The police largely turn a blind eye to the practice.

Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq, has threatened more attacks in Iraq in the run-up to parliamentary elections on March 7.

Baghdadi made his threat in a 34-minute audiotape released last night. It's on the forums, which I try to avoid linking to (send me an e-mail if you want a link). The tape is titled "the crime of illegitimate elections in Iraq," and it describes the upcoming election as a Shi'ite plot against the Sunnis.

Suicide bombers are targeting Shi'ite worshippers today in Iraq and Pakistan -- much like they did 40 days ago, on Ashura.

More than 25 people were killed by two car bombs in Karbala -- one of the most important cities in Shi'ism, where millions of people are gathered this week (عربي) for Arbaeen. The bombs targeted a group of worshippers as they were leaving the city.

There was some good news out of Iraq this morning -- the de-de-Ba'athification decision -- but also a bit of awful news: A suicide bomber killed more than 20 Shi'ite pilgrims in Karbala, and wounded nearly 120 more.

The bomber detonated his bus amidst a crowd of pilgrims traveling on foot from Hilla to Karbala for Friday's Arbaeen holiday. A provincial official said the bombing killed at least several women and children (عربي).

It's the second high-profile attack on Shi'ite pilgrims in three days: A bombing on Monday in Baghdad's Bab al-Sham neighborhood killed 41 people. Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a statement (عربي) blaming that Monday attack on the Ba'ath Party.

A suicide bomber blew himself up outside the forensics department of Iraq's interior ministry, killing at least 18 people and wounding nearly 100.

The bomber blew himself up near a security checkpoint in Tahariyat Square, in Baghdad's central Karrada district. Most of the casualties are police officers (عربي). The forensics department is separate from the main interior ministry building, and its position in a busy square makes it a fairly exposed target.

Update, 9:31 a.m.: The death toll has now climbed to anywhere between 25 and 35, according to various reports. There was definitely a third bomb, which targeted the Hamra Hotel. All of these, of course, are hotels frequented by Western journalists and aid workers. The Hamra blast reportedly knocked down a number of nearby houses.

There are also reports of an explosion outside the Ishtar Sheraton hotel.

Original post: Two or three large bombs went off near hotels in downtown Baghdad this morning; at least 10 people were killed, and dozens more wounded. One of the bombs went off near the Palestine Hotel, according to Iraqi news reports; one or two others targeted the Babel Hotel, near the Green Zone.

More details as we hear them...

I forgot to mention this yesterday, but there's actually a positive conclusion to draw from yesterday's chaos in Baghdad: The security system worked.

You can poke plenty of holes in that analysis, of course. The tipster who reported the bomb plot will receive a US$85,000 reward, so perhaps he reported the plot purely out of self-interest. The resulting checkpoints inconvenienced millions of Iraqis and shut down a large swath of the capital. The rumors about a coup, and Salah al-Mutlak's assassination, highlighted Iraq's ongoing political uncertainty.

A large part of Baghdad is under lockdown this afternoon after Iraqi security forces received a tip that insurgents were planning to set off car bombs.

Police raided several homes this morning; 25 people were arrested, and hundreds of kilograms of explosives were seized, according to Iraqi media reports. But security forces are still manning hundreds of checkpoints around the city, causing widespread traffic jams. Many Iraqis are getting around on foot.

At least seven people were killed this morning, and six others wounded, by bombings in houses in Iraq's Anbar province. Among the injured: Lt. Col. Walid Slaiman, director of the anti-terrorism unit in Hit, a city of roughly 150,000 people.

Al-Jazeera reports (عربي) that a total of four bombs went off. One of them detonated in Slaiman's house, injuring him and killing several family members, including his mother and wife.

A pair of suicide bombings in Iraq's Anbar province have killed at least 30 people and injured more than 100, including Qassim al-Fahdawi, the provincial governor.

Both bombs went off in Ramadi. Fahdawi was injured by the second bomb while inspecting damage from the first, according to local police officials. A doctor in Ramadi told Al-Arabiya that Fahdawi suffered burns on his face and injuries to his abdomen. He's expected to survive his injuries, and is recuperating in a Baghdad hospital.

A bomb outside a historic church in Mosul killed one person earlier today -- the first in what could be a series of coordinated attacks targeting Iraq's Christian community over the next few days.

Iraqi security forces have not identified any specific threats, but they have warned Christian leaders that churches will be targeted during the Christmas holiday. So Iraq's dwindling Christian community has scaled back its celebrations: The Chaldean bishop of Basra, Imad al-Banna, has asked Christians not to publicly celebrate the holiday; bishops in Kirkuk say none of the churches in the city have scheduled a Christmas mass. Large contingents of police have been deployed to churches in Mosul, Baghdad and Kirkuk.