CAIRO (Updated 1) - The Muslim Brotherhood's party said on Wednesday its bloc was leading the vote count in the first stage of Egypt's first election since the fall of Hosni Mubarak. No official results have been released. The Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) said early indications showed it was ahead in the races for seats allocated both by party list and to individuals. In the party list race it was followed by the Islamist Salafi al-Nour Party and the liberal Egyptian Bloc, it said in a statement. Two thirds of seats will be allocated by party list and one third to individuals. An FJP source, who declined to be named, said an FJP-led list had won about 40 percent of the party-list votes so far. That result, if confirmed and repeated in the rest of the country during the staggered six-week poll, would give Egypt's oldest and best-organised Islamist group a powerful bloc in the next assembly, perhaps setting the stage for a power struggle with the ruling military. An army council that took over from Mubarak has said the new parliament will not be able to dismiss a cabinet or form a new one, but the FJP's leader said on Tuesday the majority in parliament should form the next government. The government resigned last week amid demonstrations in which 42 people were killed in clashes between police and protesters demanding an end to army rule. The generals picked a new prime minister days before the parliamentary election on Monday and Tuesday. Monday and Tuesday's voting, the first of three rounds which will each be followed by run-offs, passed off mostly peacefully, but violence broke out on Tuesday in Cairo's protest hub of Tahrir Square where nearly 80 people were wounded.
