Election officials have said the Awami League has won more than three-quarters of seats in the 300-seat parliament. The voting was held on Monday. BBC´s Mark Dummett reported from Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, that Awami´s supporters are already celebrating sensing a landslide victory. [break]
The Awami League and Khaleda Zia´s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) – the League´s traditional rival – say they would not comment until final results are known. BNP was the overwhelming winner in the last elections held in 2001.
Voting was peaceful and turnout high in the first election for seven years. Election officials say more than 70% of Bangladesh´s 81 million voters are thought to have cast their ballots in a poll intended to return the country to democracy after two years of rule by a military-backed government.
Security was tight throughout polling day, with about 50,000 soldiers and 600,000 police deployed to guard against election fraud and violence.
Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, bitter rivals both and carrying political family legacy in the strife-torn country, have dominated politics in Bangladesh for years and are again vying for power after two years of army-backed rule. Both the "battling begums" as they are known in Bangladesh as well as hundreds of Bangladeshi politicians, had been kept under detention by the military-backed government since imposition of emergency in January 2007.
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