Huge turnout in Tunisia's Arab Spring election

Tunisians turned out in force to vote in the country's first free election, 10 months after vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in an act of protest that started the Arab Spring uprisings.

In some areas where polling booths had shut, people were still waiting to vote. Election officers in the conservative district of Ettadamen in Tunis said some 300 people still queueing would be allowed to cast votes.

"Everyone who is inside will be allowed vote, even if it takes us to midnight," an officer said.

The leader of an Islamist party predicted to win the biggest share of the vote was heckled outside a polling station by people shouting "terrorist," highlighting tensions between Islamists and secularists being felt across the Arab world.

Bouazizi's dramatic suicide, prompted by despair over poverty and government repression, provoked mass protests which forced President Zine al-Abidine to flee Tunisia. This in turn inspired uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain.

Rachid Ghannouchi, leader of the moderately Islamist Ennahda party, took his place in the queue outside a polling station in the El Menzah 6 district of the capital.

"This is an historic day," he said, accompanied by his wife and daughter, both wearing Islamic headscarves, or hijabs. "Tunisia was born today. The Arab Spring was born today."

As he emerged from the polling station, about a dozen people shouted at him: "Degage," French for "Go away." and "You are a terrorist and an assassin! Go back to London!"

Ghannouchi, who spent 22 years in exile in Britain, has associated his party with the moderate Islamism of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. He has said he will not try to impose Muslim values on society.

"Islam should be respected again in Tunisia," said Hasna Ben Zid, a 38-year-old woman wearing a hijab, "That's why I'm going to vote for the only Islamic party."

But the party's rise worries secularists who believe their country's liberal, modernist traditions are now under threat.

Across Tunisia, queues stretching hundreds of metres formed outside polling stations from early in the morning for an election which could set the template for other Middle Eastern states emerging from the Arab Spring.

Kamel Jandoubi, head of the independent commission organising the vote, said turnout was nearly 70 percent, with three hours still left before polls close.

That level of voter interest was never seen during Ben Ali's rule. Then, only a trickle of people turned out for elections because they knew the result was predetermined.

People in the queues on Sunday took photographs on their mobile phones to mark the occasion.

"This is the first time I have voted," said Karima Ben Salem, 45, at a polling station in the Lafayette area of central Tunis.

"I've asked the boys to make their own lunch. I don't care ... Today I am not on duty. Or rather, I am on duty for my country," she said.

There were long lines of voters too in Sidi Bouzid, the dirt-poor birthplace of the Tunisian revolution and Mohamed Bouazizi's home town.

"It's the first time I've voted because it's the first time I feel my vote is safe," said Sara Naji, a secondary school teacher. "We suffered a lot from pessimism and frustration but now we're building a new life."