Voters fought with riot police restricting access to the polls in the last stage of Egyptian elections on Thursday and the Muslim Brotherhood said the government was trying to limit Islamist gains in parliament.
One man was shot dead outside a polling station where police were holding voters back, the third death in the elections. Rights activists said police had shot the man, but the authorities denied it.
The Muslim Brotherhood has posed the strongest challenge to the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), increasing its seats in the chamber by more than 400 percent. The Islamist group says the government wants to stop it winning more seats.
Leading Brotherhood member Essam el-Erian said attempts to stop people voting for his group were more determined than on previous voting days. Some 730 Brotherhood activists have been arrested in the last three days to weaken its chances, he said.
Riot police surrounded polling stations in the Nile Delta and let only a trickle of voters through their lines. Frustrated voters threw stones at security forces, who used tear gas and sticks against crowds in several places, witnesses said.
"The police plan is to tire out voters so that they go home. Everyone here is going to vote Brotherhood," Sayed Ibrahim, a Brotherhood supporter, said outside a polling station in Dessouk, a town in Kafr el-Sheikh province north of Cairo.
The election death toll climbed to three when Gomaa Saad el-Ziftawi was shot dead in Kafr el-Sheikh. The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) said he was a supporter of a leftist politician and was killed by police.
The Interior Ministry said he was an NDP supporter and the police never use live bullets in civil disturbances.
Some 20 Brotherhood and NDP supporters brawled outside another polling station in Kafr el-Sheikh.
The government said Brotherhood supporters had broken ballot boxes in one polling station and gathered in at least one place to "cause disturbances". Two policemen were injured in Damietta on Egypt's Mediterranean coast, it said.
The voting process is officially under judicial supervision but the judges in charge cannot impose their will beyond the confines of the polling stations.
The Egyptian Association for the Support of Democracy, an independent monitoring group, said one judge had threatened to walk out of a polling station with the ballot boxes if the police did not admit voters.
The Brotherhood, which had 15 seats in the outgoing parliament, has won 76 of 444 elected places so far. The authorities restricted voting in the previous stage of the poll, but the Brotherhood still managed to win 42 seats.
The ruling party has 214 seats so far.
Voting was peaceful on Thursday in some places, including Sohag province in the south. Violence has been less serious than in the last polls in 2000, when 10 people were killed.
The final two-day stage will decide 136 seats.
The Brotherhood, which is officially banned, is contesting only 49 places as part of its strategy of not provoking the authorities. Islamist candidates stand as independents.
The Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera said security forces detained its crew covering the election in Kafr el-Sheikh for half an hour and destroyed their tape.
Police also held Reuters correspondent Amil Khan in Sandoub for about an hour, saying they needed to check his identity.
Police detained and harassed journalists and confiscated their equipment in the previous stage of voting. At least one reporter was attacked by police.
Run-offs between the top two candidates will be held on December 7 for seats where no candidate has won a clear majority.
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