Here's a summary of the main developments today:
Egypt
• The announcement of Egypt's election results, already 24 hours late, has been delayed further.. The Egyptian electoral commission blamed the delay on the high number of votes cast. State TV said they would be released on Friday. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces said they would now be revealed on Friday or Saturday. Meanwhile, the new prime minister, Kamal el-Ganzouri, who was appointed by the military rulers, has postponed announcing his new cabinet until Saturday after a number of people declined posts.
• The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party has sought to quell fears that it will form a coalition with the Salafist al-Nour party, which is currently believed to be running in second place to the FJP. The Brotherhood, which says it is set to win about 40% of seats in the Assembly, said it was hoping for "a balanced parliament that reflects the various components of the Egyptian public". Al-Nour said it expects to win 20% of seats and the liberal multi-party Egyptian Bloc claims it is on track to secure about a fifth of votes for party lists.
• The US embassy in Cairo has said that future exports of US-made teargas could be blocked if the Egyptian authorities continue to use it to cause death and injury. (see 9.38am GMT / 4.38am BST) The warning comes after it emerged that the Egyptian ministry of interior had ordered 21 tonnes of teargas from the US following days of street clashes between revolutionaries and security forces in which countless gas canisters - the majority of them American-made - were launched at civilians, causing serious injuries. The comments by the embassy came after the Guardian's Jack Shenker and others demanded answers to questions on the issue on Twitter.
• An Egyptian protester who was injured during the clashes with police on Cairo's Mohamed Mahmoud Street last week has died, bringing the official death toll from the violence to 43 nationwide, al-Masry al-Youm reported. It says Ahmed Badawy, 39, was wounded when a shotgun pellet penetrated his stomach and a rubber bullet hit his leg.
Syria
• The UN high commissioner for human rights said the death toll in Syria's nine-month uprising has now reached "much more" than 4.000. Navi Pillay had previously (on 8 November) put the number killed in Syria at more than 3,500. Activists claim the figure is nearer 5,000. The Local Co-ordination Committees put today's death toll today at 23, including two children and a woman.
• The renegade Free Syrian Army has agreed to change tactics by ending its attacks on the regular army, following a meeting with the opposition Syrian National Council, according to the Turkish daily Hurriyet. It says that the leader of the FSA, Colonel Riad al-Assad, has said it will focus on protecting civilians.
• Syria has resigned its membership of the 43 nation Union for the Mediterranean in protest at EU sanctions, as the EU discusses further sanctions against the Assad regime. It said the decision came "in light of the escalated political and media campaign launched against Syria".
Yemen
• Yemeni officials say that fighting between the army and armed tribesmen in the central city of Taiz has left 13 people dead. A security official said tens of thousands were demonstrating in Taiz against army shelling and that protesters attacked houses belonging to members of the country's ruling party. Taiz, a hotbed of opposition to the government, is regularly shelled by the army responding to hit-and-run attacks by tribesmen.
• Yemen's political opposition and the party of outgoing President Ali Abdullah Saleh have agreed to the lineup of an interim government to lead the country to an early election next year, an opposition official told Reuters. Under the agreement, Saleh's party will keep the defence, foreign and oil ministries, while opposition parties will take charge of the ministries of the interior, international cooperation, information and finance, said the official, who did not want to be named.
Saudi Arabia
• Amnesty International has accused Saudi Arabia of launching a wave of repression and attempts to criminalise dissent. Interim Middle East and North Africa Director Philip Luther said peaceful protesters and supporters of political reform had been targeted for arrest to prevent Arab uprisings spreading to the Kingdom. The Saudi embassy in London accused Amnesty of basing its criticism on "inaccurate information".
Iran
• The European Union has tightened its sanctions against Tehran and laid out plans for a possible embargo on Iranian oil in response to mounting concerns in the west over the its nuclear programme. Separately, the EU added 180 Iranian people and entities to a sanctions blacklist that imposes asset freezes and travel bans on those involved in the nuclear programme which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes. The action comes after the UK sought joint European action in response to the attack on its embassy in Tehran.
Libya
• The Foreign Office lobbied Oxford university to accept Muammar Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam as a student in the hope of encouraging a rapprochement with Libya, an inquiry has found. An investigation by Lord Woolf, a former lord chief justice, has underlined the support shown by the British government and UK firms for the dictator's son as companies scented opportunities to do business with Libya.
Reuters reports that Egypt's ruling military has revealed that the economy is in dire straits:
An army official said foreign reserves would plunge to $15 billion (£9.6bn) by the end of January, down from the $22 billion reported by the central bank in October.
Mahmoud Nasr, financial assistant to army chief Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, told a news briefing that a widening budget deficit might force a review of costly subsidies, especially on petrol, to save money.
The economic crunch has forced the Egyptian pound to its lowest level in nearly seven years after tourism and foreign investment collapsed in the turmoil since Mubarak's overthrow.
In the same report, Reuters says the Muslim Brotherhood says its Freedom and Justice party is set to win about 40% of seats, the Salifist al-Nour party expects to win 20% of seats and the liberal multi-party Egyptian Bloc says it is on track to secure about a fifth of votes for party lists.
The Local Co-ordination Committees claim the death toll in Syria so far today has risen to 23, including two children and a woman. The LCCs say 13 people have been killed in Hama, eight in Homs and one each in Dael, in the south, and Idlib, in the north-west.
The report cannot be independently verified.
Photograph: Handout/REUTERS
It's not just the election results that have been delayed in Egypt.
The new prime minister, Kamal el-Ganzouri (pictured left), who was appointed by the military rulers, has postponed announcing his new cabinet until Saturday. From Ahram Online:
He [Ganzouri] blamed the delay on his desire to hear multiple points of view from different political parties, forces and government ministries. He also admitted that various well-known public figures had turned down cabinet posts.Prominent media figures Adel Hammouda and Magdy El-Gald both turned down the interior minister post, whilst the actor Mohamed Sobhy refused the culture minister post.
A number of activist groups and political movements have do not recognise Ganzouri because he was appointed by Scaf.
The head of the Egyptian High Judicial Elections Commission has said the delay in releasing the results is necessary "as the counting of votes is still going on in a number of districts because of the large number of voters who took part in these elections".
If the delayed Egyptian election results are announced tomorrow, they could coincide with another planned demonstration in Tahrir, being dubbed "A Tribute to Heroes of Mohamed Mahmoud Street".
The clashes on Mohamed Mahmoud Street claimed the lives of 43 people with more than 1,000 injured. Friday's demonstration is also intended to pay tribute to all those killed since the military rulers assumed power in February and is being backed by 23 political forces and movements, according to Ahram Online.
They were initially supposed to be released on Wednesday before being postponed until today.
The Egyptian election results have been delayed (they were scheduled for 7pm local time, which is 5pm GMT, 12pm EST), according to journalists on Twitter, including the Wall Street Journal's Matt Bradley, who wrote:
Press centre head Gamal Abdel Fattah tells me press conference announcing elections results will be postponed until "I don't know when".
As the UN has increased its estimate of the death toll in Syria to at least 4,000, it is worth pointing out that activists claim the figure is nearer 5,000.
The Violation Documentation Centre, a website maintained by activists which counts and names those killed in the uprising put the number at killed since March at 4,741.
The figure includes 307 children, and 843 soldiers. The site also has a breakdown of the death by region, with the most deaths (1,601) occurring in Homs.
The site also names five civilians killed in today's shootings in Hama.
The deal between the Free Syrian Army and the opposition Syrian National Council (see 11.06am) has excited Scott Lucas on Enduring America.
This is massive news. What is means is that the opposition movement is finally showing signs of organization. This development will decrease concerns of fundamental divisions within the opposition. It also means that the Syrian National Council, a group that has struggled to obtain credibility at home and abroad, will almost immediately be recognised as the political leadership of the opposition.
The SFA is widely recognized by dissidents as the military leadership, but has been condemned for militarising the conflict. Their meeting with the SNC means that the the Syrian Free Army will be looked upon as a legitimate, and restrained, militant front to the opposition, while the Syrian National Council is an umbrella political group, recognising the full spectrum of viewpoints within the opposition.
Photograph: Denis Balibouse/Reuters
Navi Pillay (left), the UN high commissioner for human rights says her office estimates the death toll in Syria's nine-month uprising is now "much more" than 4,000.
She gave the latest figure a day before the global body is due to hold an emergency meeting on the crisis in the country.
Pillay told reporters in Geneva on Thursday that evidence emerging of abuses committed by Syrian security forces affirms her call that the country's leadership should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
The figure is an increase from the last update, on 8 November, when her office estimated the death toll in Syria at more than 3,500.
With the Islamists seemingly a shoo-in to be the biggest winner in the first round of the Egyptian election, is it mere coincidence that Amnesty International USA has blogged on the subject of women's rights in the Middle East?
In "After the Uprisings, Women's Rights must be upheld", Tarah Demant, points out how women have been a vital part of protests in Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Egypt and calls for them to be granted full and equal rights and for gender violence to be eradicated:
In Egypt, women faced discrimination, violence, and sexual harassment on a daily basis under Mubarak, and yet, in a post-Mubarak Egypt, these conditions have not changed for women. A recent report by Amnesty details how hopes raised for women's rights in Egypt have not been fulfilled – and women are still being largely excluded from taking part in shaping their country's future. It is crucial that the experiences, needs, and views of women are integral to the process of change.
In an article entitled "Don't Panic. Yet", Issandr el-Amrani, on the Arabist blog, confronts the fears of some Egyptians about the strong showing of Islamists and Salafists in the first round of the Egyptian elections:
Among my Egyptian friends (most decidedly on the liberal side) there is now tremendous worry about a future in which politics is ruled on the one hand by identitarian Islamist politics and on the other by a populist, hyper-nationalistic army. I don't think it has to be so, and we could very well see a transition to a democratic (but not liberal) system which allows for rotation of power. Liberals now also have to make some tough choices about consolidating their presence, making alliances with both Islamists and people associated with the former ruling party ...
Personally, I think that there can be a positive outcome here: if the Muslim Brothers are serious about consolidating electoral democracy, and work hard on addressing that issue, there will be other elections for those that disagree with their conservative views (or foreign policy, or economic liberalism) to make their case.
The biggest lesson from this election should be that the non-Islamists in Egypt need to strategise, organise and cooperate much better than they have done so far — and most importantly of all, reconnect with the average Egyptians who were not inspired to vote for them. The other reason I have for optimism is that even if the elections returned conservative candidates, the Egyptian uprising of 2011 unleashed many progressive ideas, notably with regards to the relationship between state and civilian. That battle will continue to be fought.
The Saudi embassy in London has accused Amnesty of basing its criticism of repression in the Kingdom on "inaccurate information".
Amnesty's report entitled Repression in the Name of Security (see 8.20am) said Saudi Arabia was trying to criminalize dissent in proposals that would treat activists as terrorists.
The embassy pointed out that the plans referred to were still draft proposals.
Amnesty also expressed concern about the arrest of hundreds of mostly Shia people during peaceful protests in the restive eastern province since March.
The Saudi embassy gave a familiar defence of the action. It said it arrested "only people involved in the riots, who were endangering the safety and lives of other citizens or policemen".
Amnesty said last month's lengthy prison sentences for 16 men convicted on charges including attempting to seize power, incitement against the King, and financing terrorism, came after a "grossly unfair" trial. The embassy said the men had access to lawyers and a public trial.
In a statement emailed to the Guardian the ambassador Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf Al Saud, said:
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is committed to and respects human rights in accordance with Islamic Sharia, which is the foundation of our legal system.
"The reality is that the Kingdom continues to be targeted by terrorists looking for finance and attempting to recruit Saudi Arabia's young citizens for terrorist operations within the kingdom and internationally. It is our responsibility to do everything we can to combat this evil.
The authorities in Kuwait have released on bail the last 24 protesters being held for storming parliament last month.
This video shows scenes of celebration after their release.
Reuters reports:
Thirty two people had been detained after protesters forced their way into the parliament chambers in November demanding that Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah quit over allegations of corruption, which he denies."The public prosecution office ordered their release on a bail of KD1,000 ($3,600) each," said lawyer Faisal al-Thufairy.
Eight of those held have already been freed on bail.
Syria has resigned its membership of the 43 nation Union for the Mediterranean in protest at EU sanctions, as the EU discusses further sanctions against the Assad regime.
Jihad Makdissi, Syrian foreign ministry spokesman, tweeted:
Syria suspended its membership in the Union for the Mediterranean in the light of EU unjustified sanctions.. Till they review their position
Nabil el-Araby, general secretary of the Arab League, is due to meet EU ministers today to discuss further European measures against the Syrian regime, AP reports.
Here's a summary of the latest developments:
Egypt
• Egypt's High Judicial Elections Commission says it will announce the results of the first round of elections at 7pm local time (5pm GMT, 12PM EST) at a press conference.
• The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party has sought to quell fears that it will form a coalition with the Salafist al-Nour party, which is currently believed to be running in second place to the FJP. In a statement, it said:
The Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) denied alleged alliance with the Salafist al-Nour Party, and confirmed that the only electoral coalition now is with the Democratic Alliance which includes 11 parties, al-Nour not one of them.
• The US embassy in Cairo has said that future exports of US-made teargas could be blocked if the Egyptian authorities continue to use it to cause death and injury. The warning comes after it emerged that the Egyptian ministry of interior had ordered 21 tonnes of teargas from the US following days of street clashes between revolutionaries and security forces in which countless gas canisters - the majority of them American-made - were launched at civilians, causing serious injuries. The comments by the embassy came after the Guardian's Jack Shenker and others demanded answers to questions on the issue on Twitter.
• An Egyptian protester who was injured during the clashes with police on Cairo's Mohamed Mahmoud Street last week has died, bringing the official death toll from the violence to 43 nationwide, al-Masry al-Youm reported. It says Ahmed Badawy, 39, was wounded when a shotgun pellet penetrated his stomach and a rubber bullet hit his leg.
Syria
• The renegade Free Syrian Army has agreed to change tactics by ending its attacks on the regular army, following a meeting with the opposition Syrian National Council, according to the Turkish daily Hurriyet. It says that the leader of the FSA, Colonel Riad al-Assad, has said it will focus on protecting civilians.
• Activists claim ten people have been killed so far today by the security forces in Syria. Three died in Homs, according to the Local Co-ordinating Committees but Hama saw the worst of the bloodshed, with seven deaths. The reports cannot be independently verified.
Yemen
• Yemeni officials say that fighting between the army and armed tribesmen in the central city of Taiz has left 13 people dead. A security official said tens of thousands were demonstrating in Taiz against army shelling and that protesters attacked houses belonging to members of the country's ruling party. Taiz, a hotbed of opposition to the government, is regularly shelled by the army responding to hit-and-run attacks by tribesmen.
• Yemen's political opposition and the party of outgoing President Ali Abdullah Saleh have agreed to the lineup of an interim government to lead the country to an early election next year, an opposition official told Reuters. Under the agreement, Saleh's party will keep the defence, foreign and oil ministries, while opposition parties will take charge of the ministries of the interior, international cooperation, information and finance, said the official, who did not want to be named.
Saudi Arabia
• Amnesty International has accused Saudi Arabia of launching a wave of repression and attempts to criminalise dissent. Interim Middle East and North Africa Director Philip Luther said peaceful protesters and supporters of political reform had been targeted for arrest to prevent Arab uprisings spreading to the Kingdom.
Iran
• The EU has agreed to ratchet up Iran sanctions by adding some 180 names to the list of targeted and entities, an EU official has told Reuters. The action comes after the UK sought joint European action in response to the attack on its embassy in Tehran.
Libya
• The Foreign Office lobbied Oxford university to accept Muammar Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam as a student in the hope of encouraging a rapprochement with Libya, an inquiry has found. An investigation by Lord Woolf, a former lord chief justice, has underlined the support shown by the British government and UK firms for the dictator's son as companies scented opportunities to do business with Libya.
Breaking on Reuters: The EU has agreed to ratchet up Iran sanctions by adding some 180 names to the list of targeted and entities, according to an EU official. This comes in the wake of the attack on the UK embassy in Tehran.
The Kuwaiti foreign ministry has advised its citizens in Syria to leave the country immediately "for their own safety". It also said Kuwaiti citizens should not travel to the country due to "security instability".
AFP is reporting that the Salafist al-Nour party is estimated to have won about 20% of the vote in the first round of the Egyptian elections. That seems like a high figure. Before the election analysts were putting its share of the vote as likely to be between 5% and 10%.
The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party says it is on course to win 40% of the vote.
Amr Hamzawy, a political activist and founder of the liberal Egypt Freedom party, has won a seat in the new people's assembly, Youm7 reports.
The former senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace beat the Freedom and Justice party's candidate by more than 75,000 votes in the professional seat in Cairo's fourth district.
There will be a run-off for the workers' seat between independent candidate Hesham Suleiman and the FJP's Khaled Hassan Abdel Wareth, says Youm7, citing the head of the advisory judicial committee overseeing the vote.
Activists claim ten people have been killed so far by the security forces in Syria. Three died in Homs, according to the Local Co-ordinating Committees of Syria, but Hama saw the worst of the bloodshed, with seven deaths.
It claimed the northern approach to the city had been blocked by security forces amid reports of gunfire on Aleppo Road and Bilal Square in the Bayad neighbourhood.
The reports cannot be independently verified.
The man who would be king, Mohammed Badie, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood, is profiled by Maryam Ishani for the magazine, The Majalla.
She says liberals view Badie as "an uncompromising religious conservative and even within the Muslim Brotherhood some doubt his ability to lead".
With the Muslim Brotherhood daily gaining ground in Egyptian politics, some wonder if there couldn't be a worse time for the generally more conservative Badie to be leading the organisation. After all, he was the one who smuggled the controversial chapters of Sayyid Qutb's Milestones out of prison. Indeed, many thought that Badie would actually move the Brotherhood away from politics and towards his own strengths, religious education and community outreach. Some even wondered whether he would cause the splintering of the organisation.
But Ishani writes that Badie won praise for his response to the bombing of the al-Qiddissin Church in Alexandria on 31 December 2010, which killed 23 people and injured dozens more as he urged solidarity and inter-religious harmony.
In the weeks that followed, Egyptian Muslims and Copts took to the streets in small marches and rallies for solidarity under banners that read Ana Masry, I am Egyptian. Muslims also sat in churches and joined masses all over the country on January, 6 2011, Coptic Christmas Eve, declaring that if they were attacked again, Muslims would die alongside their Coptic fellow Egyptians. They were met with the barricades, batons and tear gas of Egyptian State Security forces.
Three weeks later, Ikhwan were in Tahrir Square supporting calls for the end of Mubarak's rule, tolerating social interactions that staunch religious conservative would have viewed as unacceptable, such as men and women marching, singing, and camping in the square alongside each other.
The Muslim Brotherhood says it not seeking an alliance with the conservative Salafist al-Nour party, which is believed to be running second to the Brotherhood in the poll.
On its Ikhwanweb Twitter feed, it denied any deal with al-Nour saying "we will consider alliance with other moderate liberal parties to form balanced representative gov't".
Meanwhile, the prime minister of Qatar, the Gulf state that has been accused of supporting Libyan Islamists, has told the FT that the west should not fear Islamists. Prime minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, said:
We shouldn't fear them, let's co-operate with them ... We should not have a problem with anyone who operates within the norms of international law, comes to power and fights terrorism.
The renegade Free Syrian Army has agreed to change tactics by ending it attacks on the regular army following a meeting with the opposition Syrian National Council, the Turkish daily Hurriyet reports.
Last month Ausama Monajed a member of the opposition, told the Guardian that it was trying to persuade the Free Army to adopt the defensive task of protecting Syrian civilians.
According to Hurriyet the FSA has agreed to the idea.
Both parties have decided that the Free Syrian Army will "not organize any assault" against the Syrian regime anymore, and will resort to "armed resistance" only for "defensive reasons.""The leader of the Free Syrian Army, Col. Riad al-Asaad, has agreed that the movement in Syria will stay as civilian. [The army] will be responsible for protecting civilians during protests," SNC Executive Committee member Ahmed Ramadan, one of the attendees at the secret meeting, told the Daily News.
It said:
The Free Syrian Army itself is more a wild card than a known entity... Will itsleadership agree to political oversight, for instance by the [Syria] National Council, or will it endeavour to steer its own course and act autonomously in the aftermath of the regime's fall? Will it stand for national unity or fall prey to sectarian polarisation? Can it refrain from mimicking the murderous behaviour of the regime against which it is fighting but from which it springs?
The new agreement appears to be a response to such concerns. According to Hurriyet the FSA agreed to set up an eight member commission with the National Council.
An Egyptian protester who was injured during the clashes with police on Cairo's Mohamed Mahmoud Street last week has died, bringing the official death toll from the violence to 43 nationwide, al-Masry al-Youm reports.
It says Ahmed Badawy, 39, was wounded when a shotgun pellet penetrated his stomach and a rubber bullet hit his leg. Badawy had previously been injured during the protests against Hosni Mubarak, on 28 January, when he was hit by a diplomatic vehicle, according to al-Masry al-Youm.
Egypt's High Judicial Elections Commission says it will give a press conference at 7pm local time today (5pm GMT, 12pm EST) to announce the results of the first round of the elections.
Seventeen members of Bashar al-Assad's inner circle are on a list of those targeted for sanctions by the Arab League, according to an AFP story on Now Lebanon.
The list includes Maher al-Assad, the brother of the president, his cousin the telecom tycoon Remi Makhlouf, as well as the defence minister General Daood Rajha, Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim al-Shaar and other military and intelligence figures.
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has published details of how nine people were killed in Homs on Wednesday.
Future exports of US-made teargas could be blocked if the Egyptian authorities continue to use it to cause death and injury, the US embassy in Cairo has said.
The warning comes after it emerged that the Egyptian ministry of interior had ordered 21 tonnes of teargas from the US following days street clashes between revolutionaries and security forces in which countless gas canisters - the majority of them American-made - were launched at civilians, causing serious injuries.
In response to a barrage of questions on Twitter from the Guardian's Jack Shenker and others, the embassy issued the warning after initially refusing to discuss the issue.
As this blog noted on Monday the US embassy in Cairo initially referred Jack's questions to Egypt's ministry of interior.
Today the embassy's Twitter feed responded to questions from Jack (who tweets under the name @hackneylad) and activist and journalist Sarah Carr with this answer.
@hackneylad @sarahcarr Such misuse of #teargas by security forces may jeopardize future exports. No pending deliveries of #teargas to #Egypt
In response to another question it said:
@brobof US condemns any misuse of #teargas that could result in unlawful death/injury. We're seeking more info on its use in #Egypt
It also told Jack:
@hackneylad We've read all your tweets on #teargas in #Egypt & condemned excessive force against protestors. We take allegations seriously
Here's one of Jack's twitlonger updates directed at the embassy.
The US government (@USEmbassyCairo) authorised permanent export licences for $101m of defence sales to #Egypt in 2009 - including 33,770 units of 'Tear gases and riot control agents'( - pages 114-119). This was under the Mubarak regime.
The US Embassy in Cairo said today that Washington has given $100,000 of humanitarian assistance to the victims of the recent violence in Egypt - perhaps it could now tell us the number and value of 'Tear gases and riot control agents' for which the US government has authorised permanent export licences to Egypt in 2010 and 2011? And how many will be authorised for 2012?
With thanks to @DanieleRaineri for the State Department link.
William Hague has again accused Iran's government of supporting repression in Syria, according AP.
Speaking at a meeting of foreign minister in Brussels, Hague said, "There is a link between what is happening in Iran and what is happening in Syria."
Hague will call for an intensification of sanctions against Iran. But according to Reuters he declined to comment on the possible effect on Anglo-Dutch oil firm Shell from a new round of Syrian sanctions.
"I don't want to comment on individual companies, of course whatever we agree, we expect that to be observed across the commercial sector by all companies, but they have to sort that out for themselves," Hague told a reporters in Brussels where EU foreign ministers are expected to agree new sanctions on Syria.
Official results in the Egypt elections are not expected until this evening, but counts continue to point to a success for the Islamist parties.
A leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood Sobhi Saleh told AP that its Freedom and Justice Party had won 50%. It also reported apparent success for the conservative Salafis, and their al-Nour party.
Partial results from across the first-round provinces, which included most notably Cairo, Alexandria, the southern cities of Luxor and Assiut, showed the Brotherhood in the lead, according to judges overseeing the count. About half to 80% of the votes had been tallied in the various provinces.
But the Salafi Nour Party and a liberal-secular alliance known as the Egyptian Bloc appeared to be making strong showing in some places, the judges said
.
The blog Egyptian Chronicles has more detail on the counts so far. And Al-Jazeera's Evan Hill made a Storify account of how counts from various districts trickled out on Wednesday.
Egyptian activist and blogger Nelly Ali confesses her sense of betraying the revolution after voting in the elections. She writes:
I ended up standing in this queue for 5 hours and 45 minutes. I ended up voting for a party I knew not much about and a candidate to represent me only because he had gone through as many ideological changes in his political life as I have religions. In total there were three ticks. I walked out knowing I had ticked for a party, a member of parliament and a representative of the workers. In my dreams that night I had a tick beside betrayal, a tick beside allowing the villains to get away and a tick beside handing over part of the revolution to the enemy.
I am writing this post as a sort of confession ... I write it to the martyrs to tell them how sorry I am if they are watching me in disappointment. Either way, I write it because I do not know if by voting I was celebrating democracy or dancing on the graves of those whose blood and tears fell on the ground nourishing freedom on the land on which they fell.
Welcome to Middle East Live. Here's a round up of the latest developments:
Egypt
• The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party seems set to emerge as the biggest winner in Egypt's elections with some analysts estimating it will capture about 40% of seats in the new legislature. Al-Nour, a more conservative Salafist party, looks likely to secure second place. Official results from the first round will be announced today , before a series of runoff ballots on Monday.
• A leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood has called for a parliamentary system of government in Egypt. Writing in the Guardian Essam El-Arian, vice-president of the Freedom and Justice party, says:
Any government that does not enjoy the confidence of parliament will not be able to remain in office; and that the formation and survival of a government will be decided by the parliament's majority.
Syria
• Activists have called for a general strike today to protest at the government's continuing violent crackdown. Six people were killed in Idlib province on Wednesday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
• Turkey has frozen financial assets and cut strategic links with Damascus to ratchet up pressure on the regime of Bashar al-Assad to end its violence against protesters. Ahmet Davutoglu, the foreign minister, said Turkey would also block the delivery of weapons and military equipment and suspend a co-operation agreement with Syria until a new government is in place.
Saudi Arabia
• Amnesty International has accused Saudi Arabia of launching a wave of repression and attempts to criminalize dissent to prevent Arab uprisings spreading to the Kingdom. Interim Middle East and North Africa Director Philip Luther said:
Peaceful protesters and supporters of political reform in the country have been targeted for arrest in an attempt to stamp out the kinds of call for reform that have echoed across the region.
Libya
• The Foreign Office lobbied Oxford university to accept Muammar Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam as a student in the hope of encouraging a rapprochement with Libya, an inquiry has found. An investigation by Lord Woolf, a former lord chief justice, has underlined the support shown by the British government and UK firms for the dictator's son as companies scented opportunities to do business with Libya.
Iran
• The UK is to seek joint European action against Iran at a meeting in Brussels today following the attack on its embassy in Tehran. Britain has already received emphatic support from its western allies. Germany recalled its ambassador, while the French government summoned the Iranian charge d'affaires to complain about the attack on the British embassy.
Britain has not used its privileged knowledge of Iran to particularly good effect. It has been a loyal camp follower of a narrow American diplomacy that, other than briefly at the beginning of the Obama administration, has been consumed by the nuclear issue at the expense of a broader view of Iran's agenda – or rather, its anxieties.