Egyptians were voting Thursday on the second day of a gripping presidential election in which candidates are pitting stability against the ideals of the uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak's rule.

Small queues formed outside polling stations after they opened at 8:00 am (06:00 GMT), with voting expected to gain momentum during the day after authorities declared Thursday a public holiday to allow public sector employees to cast their ballots.

A front runner in Egypt's presidential election, former premier Ahmed Shafiq, told Agence France Presse Wednesday the country would face "huge problems" if his Islamist rivals won as Egyptians flocked to the polls on the first day of voting.

Shafiq added that voters had made a "mistake" by allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to win in earlier parliamentary elections.

Egyptians voted Wednesday in the country's first free presidential elections, with Islamists and secularists vying for power with competing visions of an Egypt free of ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak's iron grip.

Several hours after polls opened at 08:00 a.m. (06:00 GMT), there were still lines of people waiting to vote, many in a festive mood.

A Cairo court on Tuesday sentenced five policemen to 10 years in jail in absentia for the killing of protesters during the uprising which ousted president Hosni Mubarak, judicial sources told Agence France Presse.

Judge Mohammed Faheem, who issued the ruling, also handed out one-year suspended sentences to two other policemen.

On the road to Egypt's Djoser step pyramid at Saqqara there's not a trace of a tourist anywhere, and a handful of trinket and souvenir salesmen sit on a metal railing hoping for a lucky break.

The uprising that overthrew former president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 dealt a serious blow to Egypt's vital tourism sector, and a year on, visitors have been slow to return to this key archaeological site south of Cairo.

Human Rights Watch accused Egypt's military on Saturday of beating and torturing protesters arrested during clashes with soldiers in Cairo earlier this month.

The New York-based group said soldiers "beat and tortured" protesters arrested in the May 4 clashes outside the defense ministry and arrested at least 350 demonstrators.

Mourning Algerians paid tribute Saturday to Arab singing legend Warda, whose body was returned to her homeland after she died of a heart attack in Egypt two days earlier.

Known throughout the Arab world as Warda al-Jazairia (Warda the Algerian), or simply as the "Algerian Rose", the singer won a passionate following in the north African nation and across the Arab world after she started singing Algerian independence songs as a young girl.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood has activated its formidable grassroots ahead of next week's presidential vote, but the Islamists may have hemorrhaged the support that helped them take parliament earlier this year.

Pressed in by the military rulers who took charge after president Hosni Mubarak's ouster last year, and facing an electorate impatient with the weak parliament's performance, the Islamists are desperate for executive power.

The United States and 18 other countries have started in Jordan what was described as the largest military exercises in the Middle East in 10 years, focusing on "irregular warfare," top officers said on Tuesday.

"Yesterday we began to apply the skills that we have developed over the last weeks in an irregular warfare scenario ... They will last for approximately the coming two weeks," Major General Ken Tovo, head of the U.S. Special Operations Forces, told reporters in Amman.

Egyptian police raided the Cairo office of Iranian television channel, Al-Alam, confiscating its equipment after it was found to be operating without license, a security source said on Monday.

The raid was carried out on Sunday and the head of Al-Alam's Cairo office, Ahmed Sioufi, was charged with working without an official permit, the source said.