(30 Sep 2018) Iraq's self-ruled Kurdish region was holding long-delayed parliamentary elections on Sunday, a year after a vote for independence sparked a punishing backlash from Baghdad, leaving Kurdish leaders deeply divided.
More than 700 candidates are vying for 111 seats in the elections, in which nearly 3.5 million Kurds are eligible to vote.
Eleven seats are reserved for religious and ethnic minorities: five for Christians, five for Turkmen candidates and one for the Armenian community.
Polls close at 6 p.m. (1500 GMT), and it is not clear when the results will be announced.
An election observer at an Irbil polling station said that many people were turned away as they were unaware of the electoral commission's last-minute decision that two identity documents were necessary to be allowed to vote.
The last parliamentary elections were in 2013, but the assembly stopped meeting in 2015 amid internal political tensions and the war against the Islamic State group.
The political deadlock also delayed new elections, which were originally planned for last November.
Kurdish politics have long been dominated by Masoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which is riven by infighting.
Those two factions are expected to win the lion's share of the vote.
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