Egypt's Salafist Nour party has won 11 seats in the country's long-delayed parliamentary elections, reversing an earlier setback, initial results showed on Thursday. Nour, the only Islamist party contesting the elections, failed to win any seat in last week's first round of the polls led by backers of the President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. The party held 25 per cent in the last parliament.

"Nour has made these gains despite the harsh systematic criticism launched by the media against the party," Nour official Hossam Ragab said. In recent months, secular politicians and some sections of the media have called for Nour to be dissolved allegedly for being established along religious lines in violation of the constitution. The party has ardently support the coup that overthrew Egypt's first democratically elected president Mohammad Morsi, led to the outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood of which members have been prisoned and resulted in mass human rights violations.