CAIRO - The police said Wednesday that they had recorded violent incidents that claimed 16 lives and left more than 100 wounded persons during the parliamentary elections on Sunday. These incidents took place in the eight governorates of Cairo, Helwan, Alexandria, Kafr el- Sheikh, Menufia, Sharquia, North Sinai, and Assuit, the police added. They said that 16 voters had died on Eelection Day either during clashes between voters and the candidates' supporters, or due to health problems. "Eight voters, including a 49-year-old woman called Neffisa Abdul Ghafar, have died while casting their ballots due to natural causes. The dead persons have had a long history of heart ailments and chronic diseases," the statement said. Three persons had died as a direct result of sudden cardiac arrests, whereas five voters, known to be diabetic patients, were pronounced dead upon being admitted by the emergency wards of hospitals due to an uncontrollable rise in the level of sugar in their blood, the security sources said. These eight natural deaths occurred in Cairo and the surrounding areas, they added. The police said that eight persons had lost their lives as a direct result of violence-related incidents that occurred on election day. One of the victims, identified as 20-year-old Mahmoud Mohamed Hammouda, died of a criticial gunshot wound, which he had sustained during a large-scale clash between supporters of a candidate from the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) and the supporters of an election rival representing an opposition party, the police said. The incident took place in the Mashtoul constituency, Sharquia, the police said, adding that the prosecutors had launched an immediate probe into the incident. "Mahmoud, an assistant working in a small sanitary ware equipment, was instantly killed by a stray bullet that hit him while he was walking home during a fight between election rivals," the security sources added. They said that the Cairo prosecutors were probing the murder of the 24-year-old son of an independent candidate who had been stabbed to death on the eve of the Sunday vote as he was putting up posters of his father in Mattariya district. The police investigations revealed that two men had attacked Omar Sayyed Sayyed on Saturday night and stabbed him to death, the statement said, adding that the alleged attackers were arrested. Six people, were killed as a result of fire-shooting incidents that occurred on Election Day. Meanwhile, more than 100 persons sustained wounds during the voting process in Helwan, Alexandria, Kafr el-Sheikh, Menufia, Sharquia, North Sinai, and Assuit, the statement said. The London-based Amnesty International (AI) issued a statement calling for a transparent probe into incidents of violence and the reported deaths of eight people during the Egyptian parliamentary election on Sunday.
