Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party far outstripped militant group Hamas in a round of West Bank municipal elections seen as a test of political clout ahead of 2006 parliamentary polls.
Fatah official Jamal al-Shobaki, who heads the Higher Commission for Local Elections, said on Saturday that final results gave Fatah control of nearly half the 104 West Bank municipal councils contested on Thursday.
He said Fatah won 51 councils in the third round of West Bank and Gaza municipal elections. Hamas, which will challenge Fatah for the first time in the January parliamentary elections, took 13. Other parties won 40 councils.
The results appeared to show that Hamas, which has about 30 percent support in opinion polls, had not made quite such a strong showing as it did in the first two rounds of municipal ballots in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
As well as being seen as an indicator of support ahead of the parliamentary election, Thursday's poll was the first ballot since Israel completed a pullout from Gaza on September 12. A fourth stage of council elections is due later this year.
Hamas said the results were no indicator of what might happen at parliamentary elections because only a relatively small number of voters had participated in the current round.
Hamas, committed to destroying Israel, boycotted the only previous parliamentary ballot in 1996.
"The big cities still wait in the fourth phase ... which makes this round, regardless of the results, not of major significance in comparison with what is to come," Abu Zuhri said.
Analysts predict that support for Hamas will prove larger in some of the major population centres, like Gaza City.
Fatah has been struggling to overcome public dissatisfaction with corruption and mismanagement in the Palestinian Authority while Hamas also won support for its leading role in suicide attacks on Israel during an uprising since 2000.
Shobaki said 144,000 voters participated in the ballot, a turnout of 84 percent. He added that in 22 of the 104 municipalities only one party or group had stood for election.