ISLAMABAD, 11 October — Pakistan’s President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said he would hand over executive power by around Nov. 1 to the new prime minister as Pakistanis voted yesterday in the first general elections since the 1999 coup. Seven people were killed and more than 50 suffered injuries in scattered clashes between rival supporters across the country.

According to initial results, the Pakistan People's Party of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and the Pakistan Muslim League-QA were heading for significant victories. The PPP was leading in Punjab and Sindh with PML-QA in second position. The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), an alliance of six religious parties, put up a strong show in the North West Frontier Province and partls of Balochistan routing the Awami National Party in the NWFP.

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement bagged a significant number of seats in urban Sindh.

Counting started shortly after polling closed at 5 p.m. (1200 GMT) with an exit poll showing the PPP of exiled Benazir Bhutto taking an early lead in the key provinces of Punjab and Sindh.

The exit poll, conducted by Pattan Development Organization, had surveyed 5,850 voters in 50 constituencies around the country as they left voting stations by 1 p.m. (0800 GMT).

It showed PPP ahead with almost 30 percent of the vote in Punjab, the most populous province, leaving the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam), behind with 27 percent.

Although the organizers of the exit poll cautioned against reading too much into the results, a PPP victory would set the scene for an uneasy cohabitation between a military president and a party that has always been one of his fiercest critics.

Government and hospital officials said the five men were killed during clashes at a handful of the 64,000 polling stations around Pakistan.

Five people were killed in southern Sindh province and two in Punjab, police spokesman Ehtashamuddin said. He said two people died in Naushero Feroz district and one was killed in Sanghar district in shootouts blamed on election rivalry. Two lost their lives in Mirpurkhas.

In the provincial capital Karachi four people were injured when unidentified gunmen opened fire on people sitting at an election office of Sunni Tehreek, in Korangi neighborhood, hospital officials said.

In the nearby city of Hyderabad, two people from the ethnic-based Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) were injured in an armed clash with a rival faction, party leader Afaq Ahmed told reporters.

In central Punjab province an activist from the PML-N was shot dead in a village outside Multan city, police said. In another shooting incident in the Multan area a supporter of the pro-government PML-QA party was injured along with 12 activists, police said. The clashes forced a temporary closure of the voting booths.

Elsewhere in the country of 140 million, voting was steady though lacking enthusiasm, at least in the country’s main cities. Turnout was 34.4 percent in the last election in 1997.

“This is the first time I am casting my vote for the restoration of democracy, although I know it is not going to be restored,” 29-year-old student Khalid Hameed said in Rawalpindi.

Turnout and enthusiasm seemed a little higher in rural areas in a poll contested by 83 parties — including one widely seen as supporting Musharraf — but from which the exiled leaders of the political mainstream have been excluded.

Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider said the poll had “by and large” gone very well.

“Polling today was very free, very fair and very transparent,” he told the British Broadcasting Corporation.

The United States hailed the elections as an important milestone in Pakistan’s return to democracy. “We are committed to remaining engaged in Pakistan throughout this transition,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

Pre-election opinion polls had shown a pro-Musharraf faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, the PML(QA), running neck-and-neck with the PPP, run from exile by Benazir.

The PPP and the PML(QA) traded accusations about their officials being harassed or even kidnapped by the other side on polling day, despite the presence of at least 300 foreign observers from the European Union and the Commonwealth.

Supporters of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, who are barred from running in the election, accused rival workers of harassing their polling agents in southern Sindh and central Punjab provinces.

Ahsan Iqbal, chief coordinator of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) said a group of 25 armed men had ransacked 22 polling stations in Narowal town in Punjab province.

He accused supporters of a PML faction, the PML(QA) of the attack.

The PPP’s leader in Pakistan, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, was scheduled to leave for London later yesterday or early today to discuss the party’s post-election strategy with Benazir.

Shortly after voting in Rawalpindi with his wife and his mother, Musharraf promised to hand over executive powers.

“It is a legal process,” said Musharraf. “We will go by this process...and finally roughly by Nov. 1, I will hand over chief executive authority to a new prime minister.”

Musharraf enjoys broad support for his stance against corruption, and for imposing political and economic stability after a decade of infighting between the main parties which ended in his taking power from Nawaz Sharif in 1999.