A day after emerging in pole position in Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law Alliance held strong leads in two of Iraq's three biggest constituencies—the oil-rich province of Basra and the southern province of Karbala.

Maliki was ahead in seven of the 18 provinces overall, although the figures were far from complete.

State of Law already held leads in Baghdad, whose 70 seats account for more than a fifth of Iraq's 325-member Council of Representatives, as well as Babil, Najaf, Wasit and Muthanna.

The latter four provinces are all southern predominantly Shia areas.

Meanwhile, separate sets of figures released on Sunday showed secular ex-premier Iyad Allawi, a Shia like Maliki, was ahead in the disputed oil-rich province of Kirkuk, against the expectations of analysts who had predicted it would likely be won by a Kurdish bloc.

Allawi was also leading in the Sunni bastion of Anbar, Iraq's biggest province by geography and the centre of a bloody insurgency in the early years of the US-led occupation, according to Sunday's results.

That brought to five the number of provinces in which his Iraqiya bloc was in pole position as he also held leads in Nineveh, Iraq's second-biggest constituency, and the predominantly Sunni central provinces of Diyala and Salaheddin.

The INA was ahead in the mostly Shiite southern provinces of Maysan, Diwaniyah and Dhi Qar.

Elsewhere, figures showed Kurdistania, an alliance of the Kurdish autonomous region's two long-dominant parties, was ahead in the battleground province of Sulaimaniyah and Iraq's northernmost province of Dohuk.

Earlier results also put Kurdistania ahead in Arbil, seat of the Iraqi Kurdish regional government.

Complete results from the general election are expected on March 18 and the final ones—after any appeals are dealt with—will probably come at the end of the month.

-AFP/NOW Lebanon