Gunmen Attack Voting Station Before Iraq Vote

`Our forces, after receiving information, headed to the site and put out the fire. There was no one inside,` Falluji said.

Gunmen attacked and set fire to a voting station on Tuesday in an Iraqi province that was once the heartland of Sunni Islamist resistance to the U.S. invasion, police said four days before milestone local polls.

The voting station set up in a school in a remote area 10 km (6 miles) south of the city of Falluja in the western province of Anbar was unoccupied and nobody was hurt in the attack, said police major Ahmed al-Falluji.

"Our forces, after receiving information, headed to the site and put out the fire. There was no one inside," Falluji said.

"We don't know who is behind it. We expect this was a group that is trying to disturb the peace of the electoral process."

Iraq holds landmark provincial elections on Saturday that will test recent security gains and see whether the country is able to resolve disputes at the ballot box rather than through violence.

The sectarian slaughter and insurgency unleashed by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion have finally begun to fade and Iraqi troops and police are taking on primary responsibility for ensuring the safety of voters while U.S. forces remain in their barracks.

The vote will select provincial councils that pick powerful governors in 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces, and may also give some insight into the political strength of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ahead of parliamentary elections later in the year.

Anbar, a vast desert region bordering Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, was once the main battleground for al Qaeda and other Sunni Islamist groups fighting U.S. soldiers.

But the province's tribal chiefs started turning on al Qaeda in 2006 and 2007 because of the group's harsh measures, and joined up with the U.S. military to drive al Qaeda out. Anbar has been quite peaceful of late.