Karbala (Iraq): Ten people were killed in a car bombing in the holy Iraqi Shiite city of Karbala today (Dec 19, 2004) and three election workers were gunned down in Baghdad as insurgents made good a threat to sabotage the run-up to January's elections with deadly violence.

Witnesses to the Karbala attack said the car tried to enter a nearby police recruiting centre but as the street was sealed off it instead ploughed into a bus station before exploding in a ball of fire.

At least 10 people were killed and 40 wounded, said a doctor at Karbala general hospital, just four days after a bomb attack left a similar number of causalities near one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines in the city.

In Baghdad, three election workers were killed in an ambush around Haifa Street, a bastion of Sunni Arab militants bitterly opposed to the January 30 polls expected to empower the Shiite majority.

But electoral commission spokesman Farid Ayar voiced defiance, vowing that the vote would go ahead however many of his staff the "terrorists" killed.

"It's not by killing employees that the elections are going to be hindered, but the terrorists have their own strategy," he said.

Insurgents meanwhile released video footage of 10 handcuffed and blindfold Iraqis they said were employees of a US security company.

An accompanying statement threatened to kill the captives unless their employer halted its Iraq operations but gave no deadline, said the Arabic-language news channel Al-Jazeera which aired the tape.