High alert to scupper the poll wreckers

Plans to safeguard Iraq's historic election may put the country on a state of alert matching that of the battle of Fallujah, it emerged today.

International borders will be sealed, movement between cities controlled and hundreds of thousands of troops deployed to impose curfews.

Some candidates' names will be revealed only by request on election day, 30 January, with the location of some polling points kept secret until then.

A senior aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's top Shia cleric, has become the latest assassination victim in the campaign to wreck the poll.