Shiite Slate Dominating in Early Tally

A Shiite Muslim-dominated political slate with links to Iran and to Iraq’s leading ayatollah has amassed what appears to be a commanding lead in Iraq’s landmark parliamentary election, according to partial results released Friday.

With votes now tabulated from more than one-third of the polling stations in Sunday’s election, more than 2.2 million Iraqis cast ballots for the United Iraqi Alliance, a ticket whose top candidate is a cleric long based in neighboring Iran. The Alliance’s total thus far is almost four times that of the next contender, a secular slate headed by interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

Iraqi election officials have cautioned against making firm predictions based on the incomplete numbers. The partial results -- from 35% of the more than 30,000 polling stations nationwide -- are not a demographically significant sample of the nation, they say.

However, the Shiite list is widely expected to finish first once all the ballots have been counted.

Meanwhile, gunmen kidnapped an Italian journalist Friday off the streets of this capital in broad daylight, the latest in a series of brazen abductions of foreigners.

Giuliana Sgrena, 56, a veteran reporter with the daily Il Manifesto, was reportedly abducted after attending Friday prayer services at a mosque in central Baghdad. She had gone to the neighborhood mosque after interviewing refugees from the battle-scarred city of Fallouja, news agencies reported.

It was the first high-profile kidnapping since the election, which had sparked some hope that violence and lawlessness might be on the wane.

A little-known militant group declared on a website that it had taken the journalist hostage and gave the Italian government 72 hours to remove its troops from Iraq, Reuters reported. The group did not make a specific threat to kill Sgrena.

Elsewhere in Iraq, the U.S. military Friday reported three U.S. soldiers killed in action: one near the northern city of Mosul and two others in an attack outside the refinery town of Bayji, also in the north. Homemade bombs were responsible in both attacks, the military said. At least 1,444 U.S. military personnel have died since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, according to a compilation by Associated Press.

Running far behind the Shiite and Alliance slates are more than 100 other groupings and individual office-seekers, according to the partial election results, which come from 10 of the nation’s 18 provinces. None of the results from the three predominately Kurdish provinces have been reported.

Seats in the 275-member transitional national assembly are to be assigned to slates or individual candidates based on the proportion of the overall vote they received.

A complete count of the votes is expected in a week or so. Election workers are tallying results amid extraordinary security in an anonymous office building in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone.

The Shiite slate is expected to finish first in part because of heavy political interest among the masses of Shiite Muslims, who represent about 60% of Iraq’s population but were oppressed during the regime of toppled President Saddam Hussein. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the nation’s revered Shiite leader, suggested during the campaign that voting was a religious duty. His bearded image adorned campaign posters for the United Iraqi Alliance list.

Still, the partial results likely give a distorted view of what the final numbers will look like.

Seven of the 10 provinces reporting results are situated in the overwhelmingly Shiite south. The three other provinces reporting tallies include Baghdad and two adjoining provinces, all of which also have substantial Shiite populations.

There are still no official results from western and northern Iraq, where Shiites are less numerous. Sunni Muslim Arabs and Kurds are believed to have rejected the Shiite slate. But Sunni Arab turnout was low amid Sunni leaders’ calls for a boycott and threats of violence.

At the top of the Shiite list is Abdelaziz Hakim, who heads the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and is one of many clerics on the slate. Spokesmen for the grouping have vowed to be inclusive of Iraq’s Sunni Arab and Kurdish minorities. But their likely victory has sparked fears of Iranian domination and clerical rule, concerns that Hakim and others have sought to assuage, saying their intent is not to impose Islamic law.

In Baghdad, with results from almost half of the polling places counted, the Shiite grouping was outpolling its nearest rival, Allawi’s list, by more than 2 to 1.

The Shiite grouping finished first in voting by Iraqis living abroad, according to separate tallies released Friday. The Shiite list won about 36% of the more than 260,000 overseas ballots from 14 countries, the Iraqi elections commission said.