IRAQ - Dec 27 - Sunni Party Quits Iraq Election.

A suicide bomber kills 15 people and injures 48 others outside the HQ's of Shiite Muslim party. The attack comes on the same day that the Iraqi Islamic party, the biggest party representing the country's minority Sunnis, said it was withdrawing from next month's election. A car bomb was detonated at about 9:30am outside the SCIRI HQ's. The blast damaged or destroyed several nearby buildings and cars and shattered windows in Baghdad's Jadriyah district. Abdul Aziz Al Hakim, the party's leader, was unharmed in the attack. Hakim also heads the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of Shiite Muslim parties fielding 228 candidates in the Jan 30 election. Sa'ad Jawad, a spokesman for the party, told the FT that four or five of the casualties came from its organisation, mostly security guards, but that most of the victims were motorists or passers-by in the area when the blast hit. Baghdad's emergency medical service said it had transported 15 dead and 48 injured people after the attack. Jawad blamed supporters of Saddam's former regime and Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, Iraq's main Al Qaeda operative, for the attack. He said: We expect that some remnants of the old regime, the security service, the Ba'ath party, have an interest in perpetrating acts like these, supported by people outside Iraq, led by Zarqawi". Hakim's brother, Ayat Mohammad Baqir Al Hakim, was killed by a car bomb in Najaf last year. Separately, in Baghdad's southern Al Dorah district, unknown gunmen killed four members of Iraq's national guard and one passer-by Dec 27 afternoon, it was reported from the city's Al Yarmuk Hospital. Iraq's hard-pressed security authorities will be the first line of defence against expected insurgent attacks in next month's vote. Meanwhile, the Iraqi Islamic party said it was pulling out of elections because violence in Sunni areas would prevent people from voting. The party had said the vote should be delayed by six months to allow all voters to take part. The party's list of 275 candidates would still appear on ballot papers which were already being printed, a spokesman for Iraq's independent electoral commission told Reuters. Broad participation by Sunnis, who occupied a favoured position under Hussein's regime, is seen as a key test of the vote's credibility. An audio tape purportedly from Osama bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader, has urged Iraqis to boycott the country's January elections, saying those taking part in the poll would be "infidels", Arabic Al Jazeera television said on Monday, Reuters reports. The station said Bin Laden backed Abu Musab Al Zarqawi as Al Qaeda leader in Iraq and had praised his attacks on both US troops and officials organising the poll.