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The Shiite party, the United Iraqi Alliance, supported by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, was found to have secured 48 per cent of the vote in the Iraqi election; the Kurdish Alliance came second with 25 per cent, and the Iraqi List, associated with Mr Iyad Allawi, 13 per cent. The turnout was 58 per cent, with few Sunnis voting in most areas. Rafik Hariri, the former Prime Minister of Lebanon, who rebuilt the centre of Beirut and had recently fallen out with Syria over its political control of Lebanon, was killed in an explosion that destroyed 20 cars and killed another 16 people. The United States withdrew its ambassador to Syria. Fire destroyed the 330ft Windsor building in the Paseo de la Castellana in central Madrid, leading to the closure of underground railway lines. A fire at the Ark mosque in Tehran on the eve of Ashura killed 60. In China an explosion killed more than 200 at a coal mine at Fuxin in Liaoning province. Mr Ban Ki-moon, the foreign minister of South Korea, visited Washington to discuss with Miss Condoleezza Rice, the American Secretary of State, what to do about North Korea’s claim to have nuclear weapons. Lome, the capital of Togo, was gripped by a general strike in protest against the installation of Mr Faure Gnassingbe as president in succession to his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who ruled for 38 years until his death on 5 February. Arthur Miller, the playwright, died, aged 89. Sister Lucia, the last of the three children who saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary at Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, died as a Carmelite nun, aged 97. Bremerhaven zoo was bombarded with protests when it encouraged six Humboldt penguins said to have homosexual tendencies to mate with four females flown in from Sweden.
CSH
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