BAGHDAD, Iraq — Yesterday was a rare day of jubilation in this war-weary nation.

Although the exact numbers were not certain, it appeared a surprise majority of eligible Iraqis cast ballots in their first independent elections in half a century, defying the insurgency that tried to silence them with a barrage of attacks, mostly suicide bombings, that killed 44 Iraqis and two U.S. Marines yesterday.

Voters danced in the streets and let out shrill cries of joy. They wiped away tears and hugged their children. They risked death and celebrated with chocolates.

At first cowed by the gunfire and explosions, hundreds, then thousands and finally millions of Iraqis cast ballots for a new national assembly, a 275-member body that will choose the heads of Iraq's new government and oversee the drafting of a new constitution.

How effectively it performs those duties will help determine whether yesterday's election was a decisive turn toward democracy in a nation and a region that have known little of it, or the prelude to renewed sectarian strife or even civil war.

Not even preliminary results of the vote were available late last night.

President Bush, however, hailed the turnout as a victory for his Iraq policy, and Iraqis basked at least momentarily in a freedom none of them had known under the dictatorship of President Saddam Hussein.

JAMES VELLACOTT / AP With all car movements prohibited to discourage insurgent attacks, thousands of Iraqis walk to the town of Al Alamara to cast their votes yesterday. An official estimated that as many as 57 percent of eligible voters may have participated in Iraq's first free election in a half-century.

"I prayed, I kissed my daughters and I came to work," said Talib Ibrahim, a school principal who supervised a polling center in Baghdad. "When I got dressed today, it was as if I were going to a wedding. This is the moment I've been waiting decades for."

With the exception of Sunni Arabs in much of the central portion of the nation, Iraqis momentarily set aside their deep divisions and turned out in numbers that far surpassed predictions and cut across ethnic and sectarian lines.

"It's the first time Iraqis have been able to decide their fate and destiny, and to challenge the terrorist forces," said interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi after he voted inside the heavily fortified compound known as the Green Zone. "This is a good start for democracy, the rule of law and the stability of Iraq and the whole region."

The ticket led by Allawi, a secular Shiite with U.S. backing, is expected to finish second to the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of mostly conservative Shiite candidates who have the tacit support of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, Iraq's highest-ranking cleric.

Farid Ayar of Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission guessed that as many as 8 million people — some 57 percent of Iraq's 14 million registered voters — might have voted. He said that figure included Anbar and Nineveh provinces, largely Sunni areas where the insurgency has been strongest.

Unofficial figures from Anbar revealed that only about 17,000 of as many as 250,000 eligible voters participated. According to those numbers, 1,700 people voted in Ramadi, a city of nearly 400,000 residents; 8,000 in Fallujah, half the size of Ramadi; and about 5,000 in neighboring Nassar Wa Alsalaam, a mostly agricultural community. But in Sunni areas of Baghdad, the turnout appeared heavy.

"It's like a wedding. I swear to God, it's a wedding for all of Iraq," said Mohammed Nuhair Rubaie, the director of a polling station in Baghdad's Sunni neighborhood of Tunis, where after a slow start, hundreds of voters gathered as the cloudless day progressed. "No one has ever witnessed this before. For a half-century, no one has seen anything like it."

Voters had to fingerprint their ballots as a safeguard against fraud, and across Iraq, a purple-stained index finger was a mark of pride.

At one station, a woman showered election workers with handfuls of candy. At another, a veiled, elderly woman kept repeating, "God's blessings on you" to election workers. Across town, three Iraqi soldiers carried an elderly man in a wheelchair two blocks to a voting booth.

Many Iraqis took advantage of an unusually warm January day to make the trip to the polls a family outing. Parents pushed strollers, teenagers assisted elderly grandparents, and educated Iraqis explained the ballot to their illiterate neighbors.

A few Iraqis were somber and fearful. They darted into polling centers, voted and headed straight home.

Under the watch of rooftop snipers, voters were patted down for weapons and contraband. Even at polling places hit by mortar rounds and suicide bombers, workers quickly checked for wounded voters, swept up broken glass and promptly got back to business.

In the south, where the Shiites have supported the election in the belief their 60 percent majority will ensure the dominant voice in a new government, so many voters turned out in Najaf that government-provided buses overfilled, forcing local police to let residents hop onto their flatbed trucks. Though many feared that the Shiite nerve center would be a target for Sunni insurgents, election day came and went without major incidents.

Little or no violence was reported across the Kurdish north, where voters also cast ballots for leaders of their semiautonomous northern region. Kurds, who mainly belong to two rival factions, united in hopes of forming a bloc to protect their rights in the new assembly. Some groups set up unofficial booths outside polling places where voters signed a petition for an independent Kurdish state, an unwelcome prospect for Iraq's Arab majority.

In the weeks before the vote, insurgents had vowed to disrupt the elections, and yesterday they carried out the attacks that have become their trademark: suicide bombings, car bombings and mortar shellings spaced, at one point in the morning, a few seconds apart.

Al-Qaida in Iraq, a group led by Jordanian guerrilla Abu Musab al Zarqawi, asserted responsibility for many of the suicide attacks in a statement posted on the Internet. The statement could not be immediately verified.

But both the violence and the Sunni turnout proved to play minor roles yesterday.

Across Baghdad, residents who had often placed more credibility in the threats of insurgents than in reassurances by the U.S. military and Iraqi security forces rejoiced at a casualty count that, while dire, was far lower than on some of the city's bloodiest days.

"Enough fear," said Najia Abbas, a 46-year-old woman whose family was displaced by fighting in Fallujah.

Despite the flush of optimism yesterday, hardly anyone in Iraq predicted a quick end to an insurgency that has roiled vast regions of the country and deeply undermined the credibility of the U.S. military here.

A U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so he could speak candidly, predicted that attacks might intensify after the elections, posing what may be the greatest challenge to the new government and making it difficult to withdraw the 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

"I think the insurgency is going to continue. I do not think it is going to stop. In some places, it's going to get worse," the official said. "This is a long-term process. There's no quick fix."

Material from The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and The Associated Press is included in this report.