Muslim Brotherhood leader Essam El-Erian refused to confirm or deny news that the movement’s 130 candidates lost yesterday’s vote. He told Ahram Online that the entire voting process “was done in the dark and we don’t know where the news agencies are getting their reports from. What are their sources?”

The BBC earlier had run a news report quoting a “Muslim Brotherhood spokesman” saying none of the group’s candidates had won.

El-Erian said that none of the representatives of their candidates who were authorized to monitor the vote managed to do so. “They were asked to stay away from the ballots and were denied the right to observe vote counting.”

“We simply don’t know anything,” he added.

The Brotherhood is waiting for the official results to be announced tomorrow evening before they announce their position in a press conference to be scheduled soon.

MB spokeman Gamal Nasser told Ahram Online that 14 candidates from his group are likely to run in next Sunday's run-off elections.

There are unconfirmed reports that one MB candidate who ran in the women's 64 seat qouta, Salwa Tawfeek in El-Menoufiya governorate (north of Egypt) might make it, but "we still don't know for sure", Nasser said.

The Brotherhood previously said that in addition to the 130 “official” candidates the group fielded a number of registered candidates as independents. But MB spokesmen refuse to reveal their names or numbers.

In Alexandria, former MP in the outgoing parliament for Menia El-Bassal constituency in Alexandria Hamdi Hassan of the Muslim Brotherhood told Ahram Online that half the MB’s registered candidates in the coastal city were disqualified by court orders prior to the elections yesterday.

“We contested the ruling and won before voting day, but the Electoral Comission ignored the verdicts and went ahead with the elections without allowing us to run,” he said.

Egypt's largest opposition group, which held one fifth of the seats in the 2005 elections, had already been complaining from continued police crackdowns over the past weeks, in an effort by the state to curb the group's influence. More than 1000 Brotherhood members and supporters were rounded up. Yesterday the scene was no different with clashes breaking out in Alexandria and elsewhere.