Deadly violence rocked election day in the Democratic Republic of Congo yesterday as polling stations in the vast central African nation came under attack from gunmen and voters angry at long delays.

Three people were killed when gunmen staged an assault on a voting station in the flashpoint city of Lubumbashi in the southeast, 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.

Later, police in the capital Kinshasa barricaded a main road as veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, incumbent President Joseph Kabila’s main rival, tried to cast his vote. Mr Tshisekedi turned around and was able to cast his ballot at another polling station just before polls closed at 5 p.m. Afterwards he called for “pressure from the people and the international community” to investigate irregularities in the vote.

The run-up to the presidential and parliamentary polls had already been marred by violence pitting Mr Kabila’s and Mr Tshisekedi’s supporters against each other.

Mr 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 its abundance of cobalt, copper, diamonds and gold.

Logistical headaches in organising the vote in a nation two-thirds the size of western Europe, with a roads network that is crumbling after seven years of war and decades of under-development, had raised fears the polls could be postponed.

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.