(5 Jun 2005)
1. Election official locks ballot box
2. Cutaway of soldier
3. Woman emerges from behind voting curtain to place her ballot in ballot box
4. Election official punches hole in her identity card
5. Women emerges from behind voting curtain to place ballot in ballot box
6. Election officials reviewing identity cards
7. Various of MP Bahiya Hariri, sister of the late former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, casting her vote
STORYLINE:
Voters began to cast their ballots on Sunday in the second of four-stage parliamentary elections in southern Lebanon.
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and its rival the Amal movement teamed up and are expected to easily sweep all 23 seats in that region.
There are 53 candidates running for the 23 seats.
Already six candidates from the Hezbollah-Amal ticket have won uncontested before the polls began because there were no challengers in their district.
The sister of the slain former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Bahiya Hariri cast her vote on Sunday flanked by media cameras.
She was able to maintain her parliamentary seat in the election.
The Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah expects its wins to give it greater political influence to confront international pressure to disarm now that its Syrian backers have withdrawn from the country.
Polls opened at 7 a.m. (0400 GMT) and about 665,000 men and women are eligible to vote.
The region borders Israel and sees occasional tension with the Jewish state since the Israeli troop withdrawal from a border security zone in southern Lebanon in 2000.
The elections, which are scheduled for two more Sundays in other regions, came as tension grew at the burial of a slain anti-Syrian journalist.
Calls for President Emile Lahoud to resign have continued unabated.
Syria pulled all its troops out of Lebanon in April after three decades of control, and the anti-Syrian opposition hopes the elections will end Damascus' control of the legislature.
In last Sunday's polls in Beirut, anti-Syrian opposition candidates took out most of the capital's 19 parliamentary seats.
But the vote in the predominantly Shiite south promises to be totally different from the other areas in terms of political objectives.
While the race for parliamentary seats in most Lebanese areas is largely between the pro- and anti-Syrian camps, the election in south Lebanon is geared toward rejecting international pressure to disarm Hezbollah in line with UN Security Council resolution 1559.
Voters in southern Lebanon are united in their support for Hezbollah, crediting it for forcing Israeli troops to withdraw from the region and in their rejection of international attempts to disarm the group.
Hezbollah, backed by both Syria and Iran, led a guerrilla war against Israel's 18-year occupation of a border zone in south Lebanon that ended in 2000.
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