Iraqi officials say they will announce the final results of January's election Sunday, as insurgents set off car bombs and other attacks that kill at least 18 people over 24 hours.

Election commission officials said Saturday that they would make the results public late Sunday afternoon.

"We will give three days to verify the results, hear any disputes, and then they will be officially declared final," an election commission spokesman, Farid Ayar, said on Al-Arabiya television.

This woman's son was injured in the explosion in front of the Musayyib hospital. (AP Photo)
This woman's son was injured in the explosion in front of the Musayyib hospital. (AP Photo)

Early returns indicated a coalition dominated by Shia Muslims and endorsed by Shia clergy were leading the race for the 275 seats in the National Assembly.

Shia religious groups also appeared to have won control of most provincial councils, including the two biggest cities, Baghdad and Basra.

It would appear to put Iraq's Shia Muslim majority in power for the first time, marking a major change in the nation's politics after eight decades of rule by Sunni Muslims.

Many Sunni Muslims, who make up about 20 per cent of the population, boycotted the election. Most of the insurgents, who launched an increasing wave of violence in past months to try to block the Jan. 30 election, are Sunnis.

Baghdad car bomb kills 18

Iraq's interim government, fearing more sectarian violence during a major Shia religious holiday, closed the country's borders for five days starting last Thursday.

The move couldn't prevent a series of attacks on Saturday, however, including a car bomb that killed 18 people and injured 21 others in a mostly Shia Muslim town south of Baghdad.

Witnesses said a car was driving towards a hospital in Musayyib when it exploded, killing mostly Iraqi policemen and hospital employees.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the country the insurgency showed no sign of slowing down on Saturday even though the election is over:

  • A skirmish between U.S. troops and militants holed up inside a mosque in Iraq's third largest city, Mosul, raged for hours on Saturday, killing nine insurgents and at least two civilians, according to American military officials and hospital staff.
  • Earlier in Mosul, police found the bodies of 12 men dressed in National Guard and security uniforms, dumped in two parts of the city.
  • Masked gunmen killed the chief judge in the southern city of Basra. Taha al-Amir, who was also an investigating magistrate under Saddam Hussein's regime, was on his way to work when his car was hit by automatic gunfire.

More than 100 people have been killed this week by the violence in Iraq, including at least 14 Shia worshippers who died after a truck bomb exploded near a mosque north of Baghdad on Friday.

with files from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation