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By SINAN SALAHEDDIN and SAMEER N. YACOUB Associated Press

BAGHDAD (AP) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki moved closer to winning a third term Monday as his Shiite-dominated political bloc emerged firmly in first place in the country's first parliamentary elections since the U.S. military withdrawal in 2011. The challenge now for al-Maliki is to build a ruling coalition as violence rages and instability grows.

Rival Shiite blocs were the next two top vote-getters, with Sunni blocs trailing as the country grows increasingly polarized along sectarian and ethnic lines.

The showing increased the likelihood that Iraq's next government could rely on an even narrower Shiite base than the current one, which Sunnis see as biased against their sect and Kurds deem as hostile to their efforts to carve out greater autonomy in the north.

Al-Maliki's State of Law bloc was never expected to secure a majority of 165 seats in the 328-member parliament. He will still need to approach other parties to piece together a broader majority coalition to get the first crack at forming a government as violence rages and instability grows.

Still, the 92 seats his bloc walked away with increase the 63-year-old premier's chances of holding onto the post he first ascended to in 2006 from relative obscurity.

The parliamentary election was the third since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that removed dictator Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led regime and brought the long-oppressed Shiite majority to power. It came at a perilous moment for Iraq, with the country sinking back into a brutal cycle of bloodshed that claimed more than 8,800 lives last year alone.

The resurgence of sectarian violence, which nearly tore Iraq apart in 2006 and 2007, is being fueled both by deep-seated divisions within Iraq and the 3-year-old civil war in neighboring Syria.

Iraq's Sunni minority feels increasingly marginalized by al-Maliki's government since he cracked down on a protest movement demanding reforms last year.

Islamic militants, meanwhile, have seized control of the city of Fallujah and other pockets of the Sunni-dominated Anbar province west of Baghdad, and carry out frequent and carefully orchestrated mass-casualty attacks in the capital.

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Iraq: PM's group is biggest election winner - NBC40.net

By Khalid Al-Ansary and Nayla Razzouk

Bloomberg News

Published: May 19, 2014

BAGHDAD, Iraq Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite Muslim coalition won a majority in national elections and will form the next government in OPEC's No. 2 oil producer, according to a lawmaker from the alliance.

The National Alliance, including Maliki's State of Law parliamentary bloc, won more than 170 of parliament's 328 seats in the April 30 balloting, lawmaker Khalid al-Asadi said in a telephone interview. State of Law has chosen Maliki to remain as prime minister in the new government, he said. Final results are to be announced later Monday by the Independent High Electoral Commission.

"The National Alliance has definitely won a majority, more than 170 seats out of parliament's 328 seats, and that allows us to form the next government," al-Asadi said. "We have no intention to change or replace Nouri al-Maliki."

The military reinforced its presence across Baghdad ahead of the announcement, and state-sponsored Iraqiya television reported that motorcycles and carts were banned from the capital's streets as a precautionary measure. Violence has surged in Iraq, and troops from Maliki's Shiite-dominated government are battling fighters from al-Qaida and allied Sunni Muslim forces in the west of the country.

Maliki, 63, is seeking a third term in office in the nation of 33 million people, which he has governed since 2006. The new parliament will choose a president to replace Jalal Talabani, who has been receiving medical treatment in Germany since suffering a stroke in December 2012.

The sectarian violence his government curbed in 2008 has flared again, aggravated by the civil war in neighboring Syria. A total of 3,015 civilians were killed in the first three months of this year, according to the unofficial Iraq Body Count website, more than triple from a year earlier.

Political tussling has also deepened, as Maliki's relations with the Sunnis and the country's ethnic Kurds in the north have become more strained. A dispute with the central government prompted authorities in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north to suspend oil exports through the national pipeline in December 2012.

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Iraq PM Maliki wins majority to form new government, lawmaker says

NORMAN LAMONT: If anyone should be in the dock over Iraq, It #39;s Tony Blair
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2628747/NORMAN-LAMONT-If-dock-Iraq-not-British-soldiers-Tony-Blair.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Lamont.

By: Scott Webb

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NORMAN LAMONT: If anyone should be in the dock over Iraq, It's Tony Blair - Video

Basra city 1950s - IRAQ /
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kurdish Girl has been killed in Iraq, (Stoning)
July 22, 2006 a woman from the Iranian region, has been convicted of the crime of #39;adultery #39; for engaging in acts of intimacy with a man to whom she is not married. In a prison court sentenced her to.

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kurdish Girl has been killed in Iraq, (Stoning) - Video