Boost for Maliki As Party Appears to Sweep Election

Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, long seen as too weak to lead Iraq out of the ruins of war, appeared last night to have emerged with an impressively strong victory in landmark weekend elections in which his candidates reportedly swept the nine Shia provinces.

Final results are not expected for at least two weeks. But Maliki's rivals in the Shia heartland of Karbala and Basra were last night suggesting that candidates under the banner of the prime minister's Dawa party had won up to 50% of the vote in their areas.

"He has done better than we thought he would given the state of the region," said an official from the rival Islamic Shia list in Karbala. "It is not a landslide here, but we think we have only got as much as 25%-30%."

If final tallies reflect initial assessments, Maliki will be in a strong position to contest national elections at the end of the year. He had earlier been given little chance of being returned after being widely accused of lacking authority and vision during the past three years when Iraq was torn apart by sectarian violence.

As ballots were being counted yesterday, defence officials released figures showing that the number of deaths across Iraq had dropped to their lowest since the 2003 invasion, with 191 Iraqis killed during January, 140 of them civilians. he figure was less than half that of the previous month's tally of 316 deaths, which was also a record low.

Maliki had campaigned on the benefits of increased security and quelling sectarianism and had pledged much needed services to the disaffected provinces.

A total of 14 of the 18 Iraqi provinces took part in the poll. Nine of them are Shia-dominated areas. The prime minister's candidates are also reported to have performed strongly in the Shia suburbs of Baghdad, particularly Sadr City, which remains a stronghold of the Mahdi army militia group.

Less than 12 months ago, Maliki deployed Iraqi troops, with British and US support, against Mahdi army strongholds in Sadr City and Basra amid widespread Shia anger. However, violence fell away markedly across the country after the operation.