01/04/2014 20:19
Iraq general election campaign begins
Campaigning has begun for next month's general election in Iraq, with Prime Minister Nouri Maliki seeking a third consecutive term in office, the BBC reported.
No single bloc is expected to win a majority of the 328 seats in the Council of Representatives on 30 April.
However, Mr Maliki's Shia-dominated State of Law alliance is widely seen as the front-runner.
The poll comes with violence in Iraq at its highest level since the peak of the sectarian insurgency from 2006 to 2008.
On Tuesday, the UN mission in Iraq reported that a total of 592 Iraqis, including 484 civilians, had been killed in violent attacks in March.
The figures do not include casualties from the unrest in the western province of Anbar, where security forces are battling Sunni militants allied to the jihadist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) who have controlled parts of the cities of Falluja and Ramadi since late December.
The poll was put at risk last week when Iraq's election commissioners threatened to resign over what they said was political and judicial interference in their work.
The board of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) complained that that judges and parliament had issued contradictory rulings regarding the exclusion of certain candidates.
But after holding talks with Mr Mladenov, the commissioners on Sunday announced that they had decided to withdraw their resignations and resume their duties "in full confidence."