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Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki took a slender lead over his rivals on Friday, preliminary results from the country's general election showed, as opposition blocs alleged blatant fraud.

Maliki faces a strong challenge from former premier Iyad Allawi, whose secular Iraqiya bloc has emerged as the strongest challenger to the incumbent's hopes of retaining his post.

Early results released on Friday from the mainly Shiite southern provinces of Maysan and Muthanna, which border Iran and Saudi Arabia respectively, put Maliki in pole position.

In Muthanna, Maliki's State of Law Alliance was ahead, followed by the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), a bloc led by religious Shiite groups. Iraqiya was fourth.

And in Maysan, the INA was ahead, followed by State of Law and Iraqiya.

At the data entry centre in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, tally sheets were being input into computers by teams of hundreds of young men separated from the media by a glass partition.

Election officials occasionally wandered into the press area to answer questions from ever more restive journalists as to when the latest results would be released.

Initial figures from four of Iraq's 18 provinces released on Thursday showed a split between the two rival contenders for the top job.

Preliminary figures for Najaf, Babil, Diyala and Salaheddin put State of Law ahead in the first two, while Iraqiya was in front in the latter pair.

Both blocs claimed to have made a strong showing nationwide, based on their own internal estimates, with Iraqiya claiming to have won 90 seats in the 325-member parliament, while State of Law said it had taken around 100.

In Arbil province in the autonomous region of Kurdistan, the Kurdistania alliance, made up of the region's two long-dominant parties, was in the lead.

The results released so far represent less than a third of votes cast.

Complete results are expected on March 18 and the final ones -- after any appeals are dealt with -- at the end of the month.

Analysts have predicted protracted coalition building, as no single grouping is expected to win the 163 seats necessary to form a government on its own.

Iraqiya has alleged fraud during Sunday's polls in favour of State of Law, a charge dismissed by the latter bloc as exaggerated.

"There has been clear and flagrant fraud," charged Intisar Allawi, a senior Iraqiya candidate and relative of the former prime minister.

She said Iraqiya's own election observers had found ballot papers in rubbish dumps in the northern disputed province of Kirkuk.

But Hassan Sinaid, a senior State of Law candidate, described those claims as "exaggerated."

"This is propaganda from certain lists. The elections took place in a good atmosphere and the results reflect the views of the Iraqi people," he said.

Qassim al-Abboudi, a senior Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) official, added of Iraqiya that "one political entity... rushed to publish incorrect facts."

Another IHEC official said the claims of fraud were either politically motivated or fuelled by a misunderstanding of the counting procedures.

But it would still investigate any complaints received, Iyad al-Kinaani said.

Related article: Iraq pleads for patience as clock ticks on poll results

A Western diplomat agreed with Kinaani's account, noting that "the complexity of the election explains the accusations made by different parties."

"We are relatively relaxed because there have been fewer complaints than the last election (in 2005) and fewer ballot boxes have been put in quarantine," the diplomat said, on condition of anonymity.

"There is no reason to get worried at this time."

According to Saad Rawi, another election official, IHEC had so far received 2,250 complaints, including 470 related to out-of-country voting -- Iraqis living overseas were able to cast their ballots in 16 countries.

Meanwhile in Brussels, Struan Stevenson, chairman of the European Parliament's delegation for relations with Iraq, said he would provide a dossier on "widespread fraud" during the vote count to the European Union's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

AFP