Two opposition blocs fared better than expected in Saturday's polls, but they complained of voter fraud and insisted they made bigger breakthroughs than the results indicated.

Barzani, whose victory was widely expected, garnered 69.57 percent of the vote, more than twice the total of his nearest challenger, London-based university professor Kamal Miraudly, who had 25.32 percent backing.

The joint Kurdistania list, composed of Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani, chalked up a 57.34 percent score in simultaneous legislative polls.

The Goran ('Change' in Kurdish) list took 23.57 percent, while the leftist-Islamist Services and Reform grouping polled at 12.8 percent.

The long dominant KDP and PUK -- former rebel factions that fought successive regimes in Baghdad -- had been firm favourites to emerge victorious.

But the results for the two dissident lists raise the prospect of the autonomous Kurdish region's first credible opposition in its 111-seat parliament.

Goran, largely made up of PUK defectors, and Services and Reform have condemned what they say was vote rigging.

They pointed a finger at Barzani, with Goran leader Nusherwan Mustafa, a wealthy entrepreneur and former PUK deputy leader, calling on the international community to put pressure on the president and on the Iraqi electoral commission to "stop the forged results".

Nearly 80 percent of the region's 2.5 million voters took part in what poll officials trumpeted as a transparent election.

However, Hamdia al-Husseini, head of the electoral department at Iraq's election commission, said on Wednesday that 651 complaints had been filed, resulting in 135,000 votes not yet having been counted.

In the aftermath of the election, one person was killed and 12 others wounded when KDP supporters allegedly fired guns and shouted slogans outside the headquarters of the Islamic Kurdish Union, part of Services and Reform, in the regional capital Arbil.

Three Goran offices in Arbil were ransacked by suspected KDP backers as unofficial results started to filter out. A party official said the offices had been broken into and the walls plastered with Barzani photos.

The elections took place at a key time in Iraq's transition as regional leaders are locked in a bitter dispute with Baghdad over land and oil, while Kurdish voters voiced increasing concern over corruption.