The next 24 hours

Election officials said that full final results could be announced in the next 24 hours.

Sadr has dipped in and out of Iraqi politics for over a decade, repeatedly reinventing himself.

Born to a prominent family of Shiite clerics, Sadr's relative Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr was executed by Saddam Hussein in 1980. In 1999, Sadr's father Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr was shot dead along with two of his sons in Najaf.

After the 2003 invasion, Sadr led an uprising against the presence of US forces in the country. His core support in Baghdad lives in Sadr City, a Shiite dominated neighborhood on the capital's edge renamed after the cleric's family following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Afp - Xinhua - Ap