AFP - Bangladeshis voted in their droves Monday in elections that marked the end of two years of emergency rule, with ex-prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed's Awami League party claiming to be ahead in early returns.
   
Sheikh Hasina is vying with her bitter rival Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to reclaim power in the impoverished nation.
   
"Based on the preliminary results, it seems we are heading for a majority in the parliamentary elections," Sheikh Hasina's press secretary Abdul Kalam Azad told AFP.
   
Held under tight security, the first polls since 2001 attracted a turnout of 70 percent and saw none of the violence that forced the last scheduled vote to be cancelled and saw an army-backed interim government take control.
   
Long queues snaked outside voting stations all day as hundreds of thousands of police and troops stood ready to avert clashes between party activists or any attacks by Islamic extremists.
   
Despite efforts by the caretaker regime to shake up a political system long seen as deeply corrupt, the two leading candidates have ruled alternately since 1991 and their mutual hatred has paralysed the country politically.
   
Sheikh Hasina and Zia had wooed voters with promises of cheaper food, action against Islamic militancy and curbs on corruption.
   
The women, who were themselves jailed on corruption charges by the current regime before being released to contest the elections, have both said they would accept the outcome.
   
Final results were due after midnight (1800 GMT Monday).
   
Some 50,000 armed troops had been on alert nationwide during voting, while 600,000 police officers were deployed to crack down on fraud or disruptions at the 35,000 polling booths.
   
But a UN-funded digital electoral roll, which has eliminated 12.7 million fake names, appeared to have resolved many of the problems that have hit previous elections.
   
At one polling station in Dhaka, voters lined up with their new photograph ID cards in hand.
   
"I'm a first-time voter and the atmosphere couldn't be any better," Mamun Howlader, a 21-year-old mechanic, told AFP.
   
"There's a festive atmosphere. It's fun."
   
Election Commission secretary Humayun Kabir said the turnout had been about 70 percent.
   
Police captured two dozen militants in recent days and seized explosives, grenades and bombs, but campaigning and voting was otherwise free of the widespread unrest witnessed during previous elections.
   
In one of the few incidents reported Monday, 12 people were injured in a brawl between rival supporters outside a polling booth in the south.
   
Elsewhere, about 25 people were arrested for handing out cash bribes, and there were minor scuffles between Awami League and BNP supporters.
   
The vote was monitored by some 200,000 electoral observers, including 2,500 from abroad.
   
The EU observers group said the absence of election-related violence had been "remarkable", though it added that "what comes next and the delivery of the final results is the crucial part."
   
The army-backed government took power in January 2007 following months of political unrest in which at least 35 people were killed.
   
The deaths prompted President Iajuddin Ahmed to cancel elections and impose a state of emergency that was lifted only on December 17.
   
Bangladesh, a desperately poor nation of 144 million people, has a history of coups and counter-coups since winning independence from Pakistan in 1971.
   
The Awami League and the BNP have often been accused of anti-democratic tactics, with both crippling the country during their spells in opposition by boycotting parliament and staging national strikes.
   
The winner of Monday's election, either a single party or a coalition, needs a simple majority of the 300 seats in the National Assembly.