Eight people died in Iraqi insurgent attacks today as post-election violence continued across Iraq.
A car bomb in central Baghdad killed three civilians. A US army spokesman said the blast may have been aimed at one of their convoy that passed by shortly before. In the town of Balad, north of the capital an Iraqi army driver was shot dead.
Two civilians were also killed by a roadside bomb in the oil city of Kirkuk; in northern Iraq, two Iraqis were killed by a roadside bomb near the market in Baiji.
Scores of Iraqis have been killed since the country's historic election on January 30th, which is expected to hand power to a coalition of Shia groups.
Iraq's Electoral Commission is making final checks on some 300 ballot boxes over the next two to three days and will release a final vote tally soon.
Partial results show the alliance of mainly Shia parties well in the lead, as expected. A coalition of Kurdish parties is in second place and a bloc led by Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is third.
Many in the Sunni Arab minority, which dominated the country during the rule of Saddam Hussein, stayed away from the polls, either because of violence or calls for a boycott from several leading Sunni political groups.
Partial results are not yet in from several mainly Sunni provinces, but results from Salahadin, a strongly Sunni province that includes Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, indicate few Sunnis voted there.
There are fears that Sunni exclusion from the political process could fuel the insurgency, which is mainly being waged by Sunni guerrillas.