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N'Djamena, Chad -- Witnesses and officials say Boko
Haram extremists killed 39 people, including a legislator, in
northeastern Nigeria, disrupting the country's presidential election.
All
the attacks took place in the northeast where the military Friday
announced it had cleared the Islamic extremists from all major centers.
Residents
of the town of Miringa say Boko Haram militants torched people's homes
early Saturday and then shot them as they tried to escape. Twenty-five
reportedly died.
Witnesses and officials say
another 14 people, including Gombe state legislator Umaru Ali, died
later Saturday in attacks on the towns of Biri and Dukku.
Elsewhere, tens of millions of Nigerians took part in the closely contested and largely peaceful presidential election.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. Earlier story is below.
Nigeria
extended voting to Sunday because of technical glitches as millions
turned out to vote in a presidential election that analysts say is too
close to call.
Nearly 60 million people have
cards to vote, and for the first time there is a possibility that a
challenger can defeat a sitting president in the high-stakes contest to
govern Africa's richest and most populous nation.
The front-runners among 14 candidates are President Goodluck Jonathan and former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari.
Voters
also are electing 360 legislators to the House of Assembly, where the
opposition currently has a slight edge over Jonathan's party.
Nigeria's
political landscape was transformed two years ago when the main
opposition parties formed a coalition and for the first time united
behind one candidate, Buhari.
Polling will
continue Sunday in some areas where new machines largely failed to read
voters' biometric cards, said Kayode Idowu, spokesman of the Independent
National Electoral Commission. That includes some areas of Lagos, a
megacity of 20 million and Nigeria's commercial capital on the Atlantic
coast.
In other areas, vote counting ended
Saturday night, with blackouts that are routine forcing some officials
to count by the light of vehicles and cellphones.
Earlier,
Boko Haram extremists waving guns forced voters to abandon polling
stations in three villages of northeastern Gombe state, witnesses said.
Nigeria's home-grown militants have vowed to disrupt elections, calling
democracy a corrupt Western concept.
Two car
bombs exploded at two polling stations in southeast Enugu state but did
not hurt voters, police said. Police detonated two other car bombs at
the scene of the first explosion, a polling station set up at a primary
school, said Enugu state police Commissioner Dan Bature. Boko Haram has
been blamed for many car bombings but was not immediately suspected in
the southeastern blasts far from its northeast stronghold.
Jonathan denied the attacks, saying the state governor told him there were no blasts.
The
oil-rich and heavily populated south that traditionally votes for
Jonathan's party is deeply contested this time and has become a
political battleground.
The official website
of the Independent National Electoral Commission was hacked but was
quickly secured, said officials who said the site holds no sensitive
material.
Thousands of people forced from
their homes by the Islamic uprising lined up to vote at a refugee camp
in Yola, capital of northeast Adamawa state, which is hosting as many
refugees as its 300,000 residents.
Refugee Elzubairu Ali does not know when she will be able to return to her home.
"We
have to wait for the time when the Nigerian army will totally wipe them
(Boko Haram) out before we can go back," she said after voting.
Nigeria's
military announced Friday it had destroyed the headquarters of Boko
Haram's so-called Islamic caliphate and driven the insurgents from all
major areas in northeast Nigeria. There was no way to verify the claim,
which seems unlikely. Critics of Jonathan have said recent military
victories after months of ceding territory to the Islamic extremists are
a ploy to win votes - a charge the presidential campaign denies.
The
failure of Jonathan's administration to curb the insurgency, which
killed about 10,000 people last year, has angered Nigerians in the
north.
International outrage has grown over
another failure - the rescue of 219 schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram
nearly a year ago. The extremists have abducted hundreds more since
then, using them as sex slaves and fighters.
On
Saturday, the voting process began late in most places. Officials
rushed across the country delivering ballot materials by trucks,
speedboats, motorcycles, mules and even camels, in the case of a
northern mountaintop village.
Good humor
turned to anger and altercations as people waited hours and temperatures
rose up to 100 degrees (37 degrees Celsius), only to find that machines
were not reading new biometric voting cards.
Even
the president was affected. Three newly imported card readers failed to
recognize the fingerprints of Jonathan and his wife. Biometric cards
and readers are being used for the first time to discourage the kind of
fraud that has marred previous votes.
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