The story

Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's Awami League won a landslide victory in Bangladesh's first national elections in seven years, claiming nearly 230 of the 300 seats in parliament, the country's electoral commission reported.

With 295 contests decided, the Awami League had won 228 seats, giving it far more than the two-thirds majority needed to change the country's constitution, the commission reported. The league's closest rival, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, won 27 seats, with one seat to be contested later.

The results are an overwhelming win for Hasina over her longtime archrival, the BNP's Khaleda Zia, in the first vote since an army-backed caretaker government took power in 2006. The rivalry between the two former prime ministers runs so deep that they are known in the country as the "Battling Begums," for an honorific given to women of rank in the country. Read full article »

CNN's Saeed Ahmed contributed to this report.

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