Widespread violence mars Egypt elections
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-21 19:52

The government generally tolerates the group, which renounced violence in the 1970s, but hundreds of members have been detained in recent months amid increased protests against Mubarak, Egypt's leader for 24 years.

The Brotherhood said about 300 people had been arrested across the country on Sunday. The Interior Ministry said hundreds were arrested, mostly Brotherhood members detained for inciting violence and rioting.

In Alexandria, a driver for an independent candidate was killed in the fighting, the human rights group and police said. Another independent group monitoring elections, the Independent Committee on Election Monitoring, said a taxi driver in Alexandria was also killed when rioters destroyed six cars outside a polling station, but police had not confirmed the death.

Earlier, a Brotherhood spokesman in Alexandria, Ali Abdel Fattah, said men had opened fire on the group's backers in a downtown polling station, killing one man and wounding several other people. That report was also never confirmed.

In Damanhur, about 85 miles north of Cairo, riots erupted outside 10 polling stations, with some Brotherhood supporters wielding knives and steel chains, a police official said.

Mohammed Hehmat, a Brotherhood supporter, said about 2,000 people were prevented from voting as police cordoned off polling stations before closing time. A Brotherhood campaign worker, Sameh Bakr, said police fired tear gas, Molotov cocktails and bullets to keep voters away.

In the Suez Canal city of Ismailia, witnesses said a Brotherhood candidate's brother was shot and wounded by the cousin of the NDP candidate.

The Egyptian human rights watchdog said one of its monitors was kidnapped in Port Said, another Suez Canal city, and that candidates' representatives were being denied access to polling stations.

The NDP held an 80 percent majority heading into the three-stage vote and won 112 seats in the first round. In all, 454 places in the parliament are up for election in the three-stage process. The vote concludes Dec. 1.