High turnout for Iraq vote
A high voter turnout despite a string of explosions and mortar attacks has marked Iraq's historic general election for the first full-term government since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
The high turnout on Thursday's polls prompted Iraq's election commission to extend voting by an additional hour around the country.
Adel al-Lami, the director-general of the Independent Electoral Commission, said: "We have issued an order to all centres in Iraq to extend the vote by one hour."
With voters lining up in large numbers, polling stations stayed open until 6pm (1500GMT). As voting ended, celebratory gunfire rang out in Baghdad, as much in jubilation as it was in relief for the day having passed off in relative peace.
The decision to extend the voting hours was the clearest indication that there was a large turnout at the country's more than 33,000 polling stations.
High turnout
Hussein Hendawi, the electoral commissioner, said that turnout could have exceeded 10 million voters, or about 67%, well in excess of the 58% recorded on 10 January when Iraqis voted to elect an interim parliament.
In Saddam Hussein's home province around Tikrit, where few voted in January, the provisional turnout was 83%, an official in the local electoral commission said.
In preliminary estimates of turnout, the electoral commission said 80% of the electorate had voted in Salaheddin, 70% in the Shia town of Hilla and Najaf and 60% in Nasiriyah, further south.
Having boycotted the January polls, Sunnis appeared determined to make their voice heard.
In Falluja – the Sunni-dominated town and a hotbed of armed opposition to US-led forces - so great was the turnout compared with the previous vote that polling stations ran out of ballot papers during the day, causing long queues to form.
Entire families walked through the town's car-free streets while children enjoyed their holiday playing football.
The scene was in stark contrast to empty streets last January when the war-ravaged town boycotted elections for the transitional assembly.
