Hasina wins landslide in Bangladesh poll

Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her allies won a massive parliamentary majority in Bangladesh's first election in seven years, officials said yesterday, but her long-time rival alleged massive ballot-rigging.

Analysts said it was unclear if the losers would accept the result or call their supporters onto the streets to protest, ignoring the judgment of independent monitors that the election appeared largely fair and credible.

Ms Hasina told UN election observers at her Dhaka home yesterday that she wanted to work with all sides, including the opposition, to strengthen democracy and achieve economic progress, a spokesman for her Awami League told reporters.

By late yesterday Ms Hasina's party had won 229 seats and her alliance a landslide 263 seats in the 300-member parliament, election officials said. Five results remained outstanding.

Ms Hasina, 61 was expected to hold a news conference today, her party said.

However, Begum Khaleda Zia, another former prime minister and a long-standing Hasina foe, alleged widespread fraud in elections that gave her own party just 31 seats.

"So we reject the election outcome," she said in her first reaction to elections which marked the south Asian state's return to democracy after two years of emergency rule by an army-backed interim government.

Clashes between rival political activists left one person dead and 50 others injured in the northern Pabna area, Diganta Tv quoted police and witnesses as saying.

Around 100 more people were hurt in post-election violence across the country the station said. Another private channel, Bangla Vision, reported two deaths. Security remained tight across Bangladesh and police were on alert for attacks by Islamist militants as the army-backed interim authorities prepared to hand over to civilian rule.

Police said they seized 28 live grenades and were interrogating two suspected Islamists arrested in the port city Chittagong yesterday.

Strikes, street violence and attacks by militants trying to turn Muslim-majority Bangladesh into an Islamic state based on sharia, Islamic law, have hampered past Bangladeshi governments.