Deadly violence erupts as DR Congo votes

Deadly violence rocked election day in the Democratic Republic of Congo Monday as polling stations in the giant central African nation came under attack from gunmen and voters angry at long delays. Two policemen and a woman voter were killed and two soldiers were wounded when gunmen staged an assault on a voting station in the flashpoint city of Lubumbashi in the south-east of the country, a military spokesman said.
Armed men also swooped on a convoy of jeeps carrying election materials in Lubumbashi, while in the central town of Kananga voters torched a string of polling stations, amid complaints of undelivered ballots and long delays. The run-up to the presidential and parliamentary votes had already been marred by violence pitting supporters of President Joseph Kabila against those of his chief rival, the veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi.
The 40-year-old Kabila, who has been in power since 2001, is tipped to win the single-round poll and secure another five-year term against a divided opposition field of 10 challengers. The elections are just the second since back-to-back wars from 1996 to 2003 in a country that remains one of the world's poorest despite an abundance of cobalt, copper, diamonds and gold. Logistical headaches in organising the vote in a nation two-thirds the size of western Europe - and whose roads network is crumbling and limited after seven years of war and decades of under-development - had raised fears the polls could be postponed.
In the most serious incident Monday, a military spokesman said two policemen were killed at point blank range and a female voter was hit by a deadly stray bullet in Lubumbashi, DR Congo's second largest city and its mining hub. After the attack, an AFP correspondent saw some 20 soldiers in a line in front of the polling station, armed with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and automatic weapons. Facing the huge logistical problems, DR Congo's election commission had to bring in 81 aircraft to deliver 64 million ballot papers to some 64,000 polling stations across the country, in a process plagued by delays. Provisional results of the presidential race in the country, which has 32 million registered voters, are due December 6, while national assembly results are due January 13.