Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is emerging Monday as the front-runner in an election seen as a test of the nation's young democracy.
Key estimates from the Baghdad region, which could swing the results of Sunday's poll, are not yet available - but local officials said al-Maliki was so far leading in the nine of Iraq's 18 provinces.
Millions voted, braving rocket, mortar and bomb attacks that killed 38 people to cast their ballots in the second parliamentary election since US-led forces ousted dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.
US President Barack Obama, who has promised to withdraw all US troops from Iraq by the end of next year, paid tribute to "the courage and resilience of the Iraqi people who once again defied threats to advance their democracy".
Al-Maliki's State of Law Alliance was ahead in Shiite regions while Iyad Allawi, an ex-premier who heads the secular Iraqiya list, was leading in Sunni areas, unofficial estimates obtained by news agency AFP from officials across the country suggested.
Official results are not due until the end of March, and after that it will likely take months of horsetrading before a new government is formed as no political bloc is set to emerge dominant from the vote.
But early indications are looking good for al-Maliki.
Sectarian strife reduced
He was appointed prime minister in 2005 as a compromise candidate and his administration, with considerable help from the US military, radically reduced the Sunni-Shia sectarian strife that killed tens of thousands.
Al-Maliki downplayed his party's Shiite religious roots for this election campaign and sought to portray himself as the leader who restored security to Iraq, a claim dented by a series of recent bombings in Baghdad.
His main challenger, according to the initial estimates, is Allawi, whose Iraqiya is a mostly Shiite slate that has campaigned on a nationalist and nonsectarian ticket.
The other leading list is the Iraqi National Alliance, which is dominated by two Shiite religious parties, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council and the movement loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
It also includes ex-deputy prime minister Ahmed Chalabi, the man whose faulty intelligence on weapons of mass destruction encouraged the United States to invade Iraq.
Sunday's vote saw Sunnis return en masse to the ballot box, in stark contrast to their 2005 boycott in protest at the rise to power of the long-oppressed Shiite majority.
Voters defiant in face of attacks
Turnout across the country was estimated by election commission officials at over 60 percent, which showed that most Iraqis were undeterred by an al-Qaeda threat to kill people who dared to vote.
Turnout was strongest, at more than 70 per cent, in Arbil in the autonomous northern Kurdish region, and in the disputed province of Kirkuk, which is at the centre of a battle for control between Arabs and Kurds.
Baghdad bore the brunt of Sunday's violence, with around 70 mortars raining down on mostly Sunni areas.
The cities of Fallujah, Baquba, Samarra and several other areas were also hit by mortar rounds or bombs, many of them exploding near polling stations.
Twenty-five of the dead perished when a rocket flattened a residential building in the north of the capital, and all the other deaths were in or near the city.
A total of 110 people were wounded in the attacks, which came despite the 200,000 police and soldiers deployed in Baghdad and hundreds of thousands more across the country.
An al-Qaeda group, which sees the election as validating the Shiite-led government and the US occupation, warned Friday that anyone voting ran the risk of being attacked, heightening an already tense security situation.
