Opposition Celebrates Its Lead in Algerian Election : North Africa: Islamic fundamentalists are out in front of the ruling party in unofficial returns for National Assembly seats.

Muslim fundamentalists Thursday began celebrating outside of polling places all over Algiers as early unofficial returns in some areas of the country showed them pulling ahead of Algeria’s ruling National Liberation Front in the country’s first free national elections since independence in 1962.

Even as the polls closed in the city’s teeming neighborhoods, members of the Islamic Salvation Front shouted “Allahu Akbar!” (God is Great!) in the streets, while women uttered the piercing trill that is the classic Arab sound of joy.

Unofficial returns showed the Islamic Front ahead of the national front in a number of precincts throughout the country, especially in urban areas such as Algiers and Constantine, where Muslim fundamentalists are strongest.

But in the first official announcement of voting returns early today, Interior Minister Larbi Belkhair did not indicate a clear trend in the voting either way and said that most seats will be decided in a runoff between FLN and Islamic Front candidates scheduled for Jan. 16.

Official returns appeared to indicate that the Muslim party had gained a strong enough vote to avoid a runoff for at least three of the National Assembly’s 430 seats, while the FLN captured at least one seat.

The Islamic Front is capitalizing on disillusionment with the party that led Algeria’s bloody guerrilla war for freedom against France to turn what has historically been a bastion of socialism and radical politics in North Africa into the region’s first freely elected Islamic state.

Algeria’s largely Europeanized bourgeoisie has fought back the Muslim tide, and a party representing the non-Arab Berber population, the Socialist Forces Front, also made a strong showing in early unofficial returns.

The party captured 13 of 16 seats in the mountainous Berber region of Tizi Ouzo, with a second Berber party, the Rally for Constitutional Democracy, taking the remaining three seats, Larbi said. The FFS also took the majority of 12 seats in nearby Bejaia.

With 49 parties vying for seats, many Algerians have appeared dizzied by the sudden dose of democracy, and only 58.8% of the country’s 13.3 million eligible voters turned out to cast ballots.

Many analysts predicted that a low turnout would benefit the Islamic Front, and early unofficial returns reported by state radio showed the front substantially ahead of the FLN, in some urban areas by a 6-to-1 margin, including some districts in Algiers and Constantine. The Islamic Front captured 55% of the vote in municipal elections in 1990 and made its strongest showing in these urban districts.

A spokeswoman for the Women’s Assn. of Algiers said Thursday night that the early returns “give me an ache in the stomach. Our future is not rosy.”