"The counting process first started in Kirkuk because that is where there was the greatest number of disputes," electoral commission member Imad Jamil told AFP.

A team of about 30 commission staff began counting ballots in 500 boxes, 186 of which were not included in the first count, Jamil said, without elaborating.

Baghdad sent military reinforcements to the area on Monday, and on Tuesday counter-terrorism units set up a security cordon around the building where ballots were being manually recounted.

Journalists with the official Iraqiya channel were the only members of the press allowed into building.

Iraq's supreme court ordered a manual vote recount in polling stations where results from the May 12 legislative poll were contested following allegations of fraud.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party took away a sizeable majority of the votes cast in Kirkuk.

Kirkuk's Kurdish majority, along with its Arabs and Turkmen, had threated the worst after the polls, forcing authorities to impose a curfew a night before the election results were announced.

The PUK had won six seats, while three others had gone to the Turkmen Front, three to the Arab Front and one to the Christians.

On Sunday, at least 19 people were wounded in a suicide attack on a warehouse in Kirkuk where ballots from the legislative poll where stored.

The building was damaged by the blast but the ballot boxes were unaffected, said Kirkuk governor Rakan al-Juburi.

The election was won by populist Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr's alliance with Communists, as long-time political figures were pushed out by voters seeking change in a country mired in conflict and corruption.

After the manual recount of the ballots in Kirkuk, the process will continue in the three Kurdish provinces of Arbil, Sulaymaniyah and Dohuk, as well as Nineveh, Salaheddin and Anbar, said Jamil.