Agencies/Cairo

The first phase of Egypt’s long-delayed parliamentary elections ended yesterday as polling closed at 9pm and counting began immediately.
President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi’s supporters are expected to dominate the polls, which were marked by a low turnout despite the government giving workers a half day off to encourage voting.
More than 200 of 596 seats are at stake across half the country, after only four candidates in local constituencies secured outright majorities in an initial round of voting last week.
The president’s supporters in the For Love of Egypt alliance last week made a clean sweep of the 60 seats available for party lists in this phase of the elections.
The rest of the country will vote in November and December.
The parliament will be the first to take office since Sisi, then head of the armed forces, ousted Islamist president Mohamed Mursi two years ago.
Footage on local TV stations showed several polling stations almost empty nearly two hours after the balloting started.
The elections have generated scant enthusiasm, most notably among young people many of whom feel that Sisi’s administration has rolled back many of the freedoms won in the 2011 uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak.
Around 26.5% of eligible voters cast ballots last week in the first round, according to the election commission, with only four candidates in the 103 local constituencies gaining an overall majority and thereby avoiding a run-off.
Sisi has been ruling by decree since his election in 2014, a year after he ousted Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood following mass protests against the Islamist leader’s rule.
The Brotherhood, which came first in the parliamentary elections held after Mubarak’s fall, is now outlawed in Egypt and designated a terrorist organisation.
Independent candidates are likely to do well in the run-off polls.  The best-placed parties are the centre-right Free Egyptians Party, contesting 65 seats, and the recently founded Nation’s Future party.
Both are strong supporters of Sisi.
The only Islamist party to take part in the elections, Nour, had a disappointing result and is only in the running for some 24 seats.
The election is the third and last step in a military-backed transition plan announced following Mursi’s overthrow, after the ratification of a new constitution and the presidential election won by Sisi.
Egypt has been without a legislature for more than three years.
In 2012, the country’s top court dissolved the Islamist-led legislature, saying it had been elected under a faulty system.
That decision precipitated a political and constitutional crisis that played a major role in Mursi’s downfall, after he sought to rule by decree without judicial oversight.
•Egypt has extended by three months a state of emergency imposed on parts of Northern Sinai as the military mounts counter-insurgency operations against Islamist militants, the government said yesterday.
The state of emergency extension, announced by Sisi in a written decree yesterday, will be implemented in Rafah, El Arish, Sheikh Zuweid and surrounding areas starting retroactively from Tuesday and also extends a night-time curfew.
The measure was first introduced exactly one year ago after 33 security personnel were killed in an attack at a checkpoint in northern Sinai. It was extended by three months in January, April and July.
The attack was claimed by Sinai Province, an affiliate of Islamic State. The group, which aims to topple the government in Cairo, has mainly focused on targets in Sinai.
The military announced an operation on September 7 carried out by joint units from the military and the police against militants in Sinai.
The military said it killed 535 militants in just two weeks during the first phase of the operation.