The top seed came away a 6-1, 7-5 winner over the top Arab women's player as former world number one Venus Williams also bounced back from her injury worries with a straight sets win over Australian No 1 Alicia Molik.

But there was no fairytale return for former world number one Jennifer Capriati who lost her comeback match against Greece's Eleni Daniilidou.

Williams, the second seed, was the recipient of a first round bye and came away a 6-3, 6-4 winner in her second round tie against unseeded Molik.

The 23-year-old Williams had withdrawn from last week's event in Antwerp because of a strained lower right leg suffered in Tokyo three weeks ago. She had returned to competitive tennis at last month's Australian Open following a six-month lay-off caused by an abdominal injury.

Afterwards the former Wimbledon and US Open champion celebrated as though she had won another major title.

"It was the second most exciting opening match of a tournament I have ever played," Venus said.

"The first was my first first round match. And this one was the next most exciting because I have had a lot of injuries which have hampered my performances and I haven't really prepared enough to play well."

Williams next meets rising Russian teenager Svetlana Kuznetsova, who later defeated Germany's Anca Barna 6-4, 6-3, for a place in the semi-finals.

But Capriati, the third seed, who has been sidelined for three months with a back injury, was not so fortunate and lost her wind-affected match to Daniilidou 6-4, 7-6.

The American had lost a little speed and was less sure of herself on the big points, but was nevertheless not far below her best against an opponent who looked to be building up well to the biggest moment of her career at the Olympics in her homeland in August.

"I was not displeased with the way I played," said Capriati.

Daniilidou used her height and reach to attack the net and also scored well with some fluent and varied backhand drives. Most of all she grew in confidence after Capriati played an indifferent game when serving to save the first set.

Snatching that advantage helped Daniilidou to attack even more boldly whenever Capriati opened up the court with diagonal drives, and when the unseeded player broke serve and consolidated to 5-2 it looked all over.

It was then that Capriati's fighting instincts surfaced once more. She saved three match points on the Daniilidou serve at 3-5, broke back, and then broke again to lead 6-5, at which stage she was serving for the second set.

But Daniilidou did excellently to prevent her opponent generating any further momentum. She pressured the Capriati second serve, broke back for six-all, and played two solidly forcing rallies from the baseline in the tie-break to grab decisive mini-breaks at 4-2 and 5-2.

Daniilidou next meets the Japanese fifth seed Ai Sugiyama in the quarterfinals, as Henin-Hardenne plays former Wimbledon champion Conchita Martinez, and unseeded American Meghann Shaughnessy plays fourth-seeded Russian Anastasia Myskina.