Under a heavy security presence, over 19 million Iraqis took to the polls Sunday to elect a new leadership capable of pushing the country forward in the wake of a U.S. withdrawal, and determining its future.
 

Amid threats of violence to thwart the election process, Iraqis will choose from more than 6,200 candidates vying to be elected to the country’s 325 seat parliament.

At least 25 people were killed in an arra of deadly attacks that swept through the country Sunday. Fourteen  people died in northeastern Baghdad after an explosion leveled a building, and mortar attacks in western Baghdad killed seven people in two different neighborhoods, police and hospital officials said.

Early Sunday, as citizens began to queue up at the polling stations, three people were killed by mortar fire. Shells landed in a neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, and three shells were fired towards the Green Zone where the U.S. Embassy and prime minister’s office are located.
 

To enhance security, the country’s borders have been sealed and the airport closed, and checkpoints set up in city streets in addition to thousands of Iraqi police and security forces deployed in the streets. U.S. forces opted to maintain a low profile throughout election day, which officials described as “an entirely Iraqi show.”
 

Towards the end of the summer, the U.S. is expected to decrease the number of troops serving in Iraq to at least half. Over 4,300 U.S. servicemen and servicewomen have lost their lives in the battle torn country in almost seven years of deployment in the country.
 

In a mostly-Sunni enclave called Zubair, near the southern port city of Basra, Jaman Khalf  was the first person to cast his ballot. “We have come here looking for change. We hope that Iraqis will elect qualified people who will salvage us from the miserable situation we are living in. We want better services, and we want construction and this is the reaon we are voting," he said.
 

But in the city of Baqouba, where a series of bomb attacks killed thirty people in the past week, the streets were nearly empty. At one polling center, a school, prospective voters had to go through at least three rings of police security, getting searched by authorities every time.
 

The election has been viewed by many as a crossroads at which Iraq will decide whether to adhere to the sectarian politics — Shiites aligning with Shiites, Sunnis with Sunnis and Kurds with Kurds — that have defined its short democratic history. Or move away from the sectarian tensions that almost destroyed this Shiite majority country that was held down under Saddam Hussein's Sunni-minority rule.
 

Iraqis hope it will help them achieve national reconciliation at a time when the United States has vowed to stick to President Barack Obama's timetable that calls for the withdrawal of combat forces by late summer and all American troops by the end of next year.
 

Among this year’s candidates are, Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, who is seeking a second, four-year term in office, contesting this election at the head of his State of Law Coalition. Al-Maliki took office in May 2006 after winning the premiership as a compromise candidate put forward by Shiite parties.

Jalal Talabani,a senior and longtime leader of Iraq's Kurdish minority who is currently  serving a second term as president. He founded the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in 1975, one of the two main Kurdish parties that fought Saddam Hussein.

Adel Abdul-Mahdi, the Shiite vice president is a French-trained economist who has been a prime minister-in waiting since 2005. Abdul-Mahdi, a stalwart of the Iranian-backed Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council party, twice came close to becoming prime minister but missed out in both cases to candidates from the Dawa Party.

Tariq al-Hashemi, the Sunni vice president, who is the grandson of an Ottoman-era general, has been among the harshest critics of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Ayad Allawi, the former prime minister is the face of secular politics in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. A Shiite, Allawi has carved a niche for himself in today's Iraq as the answer to urban and educated Iraqis, both Sunnis and Shiites, who are dismayed by the religious parties and the close ties they maintain with the country's cleric-ruled neighbor, Iran.

(AP contributed to this report)