CAIRO — As some voters in mainland Egypt chanted praise for President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi outside polling stations on their way to re-elect him, residents of the restive northern Sinai Peninsula lined up for a different reason — bread handouts. A military campaign in North Sinai that aims to crush Daesh militants has blocked most access to the peninsula as forces carry out air raids, deploy patrols and impose curfews, creating a stranglehold that has led to a shortage of food and supplies, locals say. With many people afraid to leave their homes amid the fighting against militants, barely any voters cast their ballots in parts of North Sinai on the first day of the three-day election, local officials and residents said. I went to vote because I was waiting in line to pick up bread being handed out by the army, school teacher Selim Ahmed told Reuters by phone from his town of Sheikh Zuweid. The polling station happened to be nearby so I voted. People here are waiting for food baskets, of which there are few. They're not queuing up to vote, he said. Ahmed Raouf, an official overseeing voting in another area in Sheikh Zuweid, near the border with the Gaza Strip, said only one person had been into the polling station he was supervising. That's out of an electorate of 6,000 people in this area. People are scared to come out because of the ongoing military operations and threats of targeting polling stations, Raouf said. Daesh in the weeks before the election warned Egyptians not to vote in an apparent threat. Egypt's election commission said late on Monday that turnout in parts of North Sinai had been very good. The election, in which polls are open from Monday to Wednesday, is set to hand former military commander Sisi a second term. Militants have waged an insurgency in North Sinai which has intensified since 2013. A year later, Daesh set up its Sinai branch and has killed hundreds of soldiers and police and expanded targets to include civilians. An attack on a mosque near the North Sinai capital of Al-Arish in November killed more than 300 people, Egypt's deadliest such incident, prompting Sisi to order the military to use brute force to crush insurgents. The tactics the military is using, which some analysts say are too heavy-handed to defeat a guerrilla-