Turnout in Iraq's constitutional referendum may have reached 10 million voters, or nearly two thirds of those registered, a member of Iraq's Electoral Commission said after polls closed today.
If 10 million of the eligible 15.5 million voters cast ballots, that would give a turnout of around 65 per cent, higher than the 58 per cent recorded in January's election, the first held after after Saddam Hussein's overthrow.
Ballot counting has already begun and partial expects could be released on Monday, with a final, if uncertified tally by Thursday.
Although insurgents fought gunbattles with Iraqi and US forces in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, throughout the capital and much of the country, voting appeared to go smoothly and safely for 10 hours until polling stations closed.
Sunni militants threatened to attack the vote, but while mortar rounds landed near a polling station in Baghdad, and several roadside bombs went off, there was much less violence than the US military had said could be expected. It was in marked contrast to the elections in January, when insurgents carried out more than a hundred attacks on the day, including suicide bombings, killing more than 40 people.
US President George W. Bush, keen to show progress after criticism of his Iraq policy, called the vote "a critical step forward in Iraq's march toward democracy".
Despite hostility to the constitution in Sunni areas, few officials expected the two-thirds rejection in at least three provinces that would be required to veto it.
Three Iraqi soldiers were killed by a bomb north of Baghdad and three more were killed by a mortar bomb south of the capital. Despite those attacks and the Ramadi clashes, security overall seemed to hold, with 100,000 Iraqi police and soldiers protecting 6,000 polling sites, and US troops on call.
Iraq's Electoral Commission and UN monitors said things went well, with the vast majority of polling sites opened without incident.