(Adds court ruling, paragraph 8, edits)
CAIRO, March 11 (Reuters) - Egypt has detained at least 17 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including three who had submitted nomination papers for local council elections in April, Brotherhood sources said on Tuesday.
The detentions are part of an escalating crackdown on the Brotherhood, Egypt's most powerful opposition group, before the elections on April 8, and took place in the provinces of Giza, Sharkia, Menoufia, Beheira and Assiut.
The Brotherhood says the state has systematically blocked its members from registering to stand for the April ballot by arresting large numbers of likely candidates, and through bureaucratic obstruction and police harassment.
The Interior Ministry declined to comment on the allegations. Egyptian police routinely hold opposition politicians ahead of elections to prevent them from campaigning, and usually free them without charges after the vote.
Egypt's local councils hold little real power, but seats may be important nationally if the Brotherhood wants to qualify to field an independent candidate for the presidency in the future.
Independent presidential candidates need support from 140 members of local councils in addition to backing from members of parliament.
The Brotherhood said that as of Monday, only 50 or 60 of its members had been able to submit papers to stand as candidates, but added that even that is no guarantee their names would appear on the ballots.
In a move that could help the Brotherhood get its members' names on the ballot, a court in the northern town of Ismailia ordered local officials to accept the nomination papers of 47 Brotherhood members who had been blocked from submitting them, court sources said.
In a separate incident on Tuesday, four Brotherhood students at Alexandria University were injured in clashes with campus security. They were protesting over what they said was increasing harassment by security men at university gates.
The Brotherhood seeks an Islamic state through non-violent, democratic means. The government has banned the organisation and will not let the Brotherhood form an official political party, so members stand in elections as independents.
Egypt postponed local council elections for two years in 2006 after the Brotherhood performed better than expected in a parliamentary election in 2005. (Writing by Aziz El-Kaissouni; editing by Tim Pearce)
