Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's hopes of retaining his post were given a major boost yesterday when updated election results showed a strengthening of his grip on Baghdad, Iraq's biggest province.

His success in the capital, which accounts for more than a fifth of all parliamentary seats, builds on leads in seven provinces overall, making it increasingly likely his State of Law Alliance will be the biggest single bloc in the house.

Maliki's nearest rival is leading in five provinces, though the figures remain incomplete.

Meanwhile, a suicide and car bombing struck west of Baghdad on Monday, in the first such attack since the March 7 poll, killing eight people and highlighting the security concerns which still plague Iraq.

The results from the election -- the second since Saddam Hussein was ousted in the 2003 US-led invasion -- come less than six months before the United States is due to withdraw all combat troops from the country.

Preliminary results, based on 60 percent of ballots counted, showed State of Law garnered 518,203 votes, followed by the Iraqiya bloc of the incumbent's main challenger, secular ex-premier Iyad Allawi, with 453,028.

The Iraqi National Alliance (INA), a coalition of Shiite religious groups, was third with around 323,975 votes.

Maliki, a Shiite who has sought to portray himself as the leader who restored Iraq's security, also holds comfortable leads in the southern oil-rich province of Basra, the third-biggest in Iraq, and the central province of Karbala.

State of Law also holds leads in Babil, Najaf, Wasit and Muthanna, four other southern Shiite provinces.

Opposition blocs have alleged fraud in the election and the count, but Maliki dismissed the complaints as "very small" in nature, in televised remarks to Iraq's National Security Council broadcast late on Sunday.

The television appearance was Maliki's first since the election and came after his office announced on Thursday that he had undergone surgery in a Baghdad hospital for an unspecified ailment.

Election officials have also downplayed charges of fraud.

Faraj al-Haidari, who heads the national election commission, told reporters the number of complaints in the general election was less than half those filed during provincial polls in January 2009.

The electoral commission has pleaded for patience as vote tabulation has been slowed by persistent computer crashes, which again affected work on Sunday.

Figures released on Sunday showed Allawi, a Shiite Arab like Maliki, ahead in the northern oil province of Kirkuk, defying predictions of a win for the Kurdish bloc which wants to incorporate Kirkuk into the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan in the north.

Allawi is also leading in the former Sunni Arab insurgent bastion of Anbar, Iraq's largest province geographically, bringing to five the number of provinces in which Iraqiya is ahead.

It leads in Nineveh, Iraq's second largest province around the main northern city of Mosul, and the predominantly Sunni central provinces of Diyala and Salaheddin.

The INA is ahead in the Shiite southern provinces of Maysan, Diwaniyah and Dhi Qar.

Elsewhere, figures showed Kurdistania, an alliance of the two main Kurdish former rebel factions, ahead in the battleground province of Sulaimaniyah and Iraq's northernmost province of Dohuk.

Earlier results also put Kurdistania at front in Arbil, seat of the Iraqi Kurdish regional government.

Iraq's system of proportional representation makes it unlikely that any single grouping will clinch the 163 seats needed to form a government in Baghdad on its own, and protracted coalition building is likely.

Complete election results are expected on March 18 and the final tally -- after any appeals are ruled on -- likely to follow at the end of the month.

Security officials have expressed concern that a lengthy period of coalition building could give insurgent groups and Al-Qaeda an opportunity to further destabilise Iraq.

Their concerns were illustrated when a double-blast suicide bomber targeting a military checkpoint and labourers killed eight people and wounded 28 other civilians on Monday, in Fallujah, in Anbar province.