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by deadly rebel attacks on polling stations and rioting from angry voters.
In the day’s worst incident, gunmen opened fire on a polling station in the centre of the flashpoint city of Lubumbashi, in the southeast of the country, in the capital of the restive mining province of Katanga.
They killed two policemen at pointblank range and a woman who was hit by a stray bullet.
Gunmen in Lubumbashi also launched a pre-dawn attack on a convoy of jeeps carrying election materials.
Officials said seven or eight attackers were later tracked down by military and police and killed. Katanga governor Moise Katumbi said the situation in the province was under control.
An ex-member of a separatist movement fighting for the province’s independence told AFP by phone from South Africa that the group had carried out the attack to call for an independence referendum instead of “this vote that doesn’t have anything to do with us in Katanga”.
In the central town of Kananga, meanwhile, a stronghold for veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, voters upset over delays and allegations of fraud went on the rampage.
They torched a string of polling stations, stole ballots and blocked a truck from delivering election materials, a UN source said.
President Joseph Kabila, in power since 2001, is tipped to win a new five-year term running against a divided opposition field of 10 candidates, after parliament changed the constitution in January to scrap two-round elections in favour of a single-round, first-past-the-post system.
Preliminary results in the presidential race are not expected until December 6, while national assembly results are due January 13.
In the capital Kinshasa, the day proceeded without major incident until police cars, two armoured vehicles and some 150 riot police blockaded a main road as Tshisekedi went to cast his ballot.
The opposition leader, who had thousands of supporters running behind him and hanging off the cars in his convoy, did a U-turn when he reached the barricade. He was able to cast his ballot at another voting station just before polls closed.
Violence marked the run-up to the presidential and parliamentary polls as supporters of Kabila and Tshisekedi clashed.
Tshisekedi’s supporters clashed with police Saturday in Kinshasa as officials banned candidates from holding their final rallies following violence earlier that day in which at least two people died.
Holding the vote, in a nation two-thirds the size of Western Europe with a road network that is crumbling and limited after seven years of war and decades of under-development, was a logistical nightmare. – AFP.
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