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 yesterday, 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 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 US-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 US soldiers.

But the province's tribal chiefs turned on Al Qaeda because of its harsh measures, and joined up with the US military. Anbar has been quite peaceful of late though analysts warn that tensions have been rising before the vote.

The province's mainly Sunni Arab population boycotted the last vote in 2005 and its local council was appointed. Some of the tribal chiefs whose US-paid fighters took on Al Qaeda have entered the race, and hope to defeat the incumbent councillors, many of whom belong to or are allied with the main Sunni Arab parliamentary bloc, the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP).

Officials have warned that the period following the election could be more volatile than the one before it, as politicians currently in power may refuse to give up positions, and the patronage they control, if they lose.

Among other threats, "we expect ... a backlash when the election results are announced," Major General Othman al-Ghanimi, commander of the Iraqi army's southern division, told a news conference in Baghdad.

Outside Anbar, the ballot is expected to reconcile Iraq's once dominant but minority Sunni Arabs with other communities, in particular the Shi'ite Muslim majority. Tens of thousands died when Sunnis and Shi'ites turned on each other.
The Sunni boycott of the last vote resulted in ethnic Kurds controlling Nineveh province in the north, even though they are only a quarter of the population there, and in Sunni Arabs being excluded from power in the ethnically mixed province of Diyala.

Both Nineveh, home to the last major Al Qaeda holdout of Mosul, and Diyala remain among Iraq's most violent areas. -Reuters