Ailing Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika is poised to clinch a fourth term after the country voted in an election in which 70 people were wounded in protests.
Voting ended by 1900 GMT on Thursday (0500 on Friday AEST) at polling booths across the vast North Africa country, but with the count now under way, the 77-year-old president, who has been in power since 1999, remains the firm favourite of the six candidates.
In his first public appearance in two years, a smiling Bouteflika arrived at a voting centre in Algiers mid-morning in a wheelchair, waving but making no comment to reporters covering an election tainted by fraud warnings and boycott calls.
All eyes are on the turnout and any signs of vote rigging, with officials saying 37.06 per cent of the electorate had voted by 1700 GMT and a third of the polling stations staying open an extra hour.
The official result is due on Friday.
Sporadic violence marred the election process, especially in the Kabylie, a restive, mostly Berber region east of Algiers.
Clashes at three places in Bouira province, between police and youths seeking to disrupt the vote, wounded at least 70 people, local sources said, while small protests by activists shouting anti-regime slogans were quickly snuffed out in the capital.
In the Kabylie village of Raffour, anti-regime sentiment was palpable, with masked youths armed with slings and chanting hostile slogans confronting police who fired tear gas.
Bouteflika's main rival, former premier Ali Benflis who ran against him in 2004 but lost heavily, charged that the vote 10 years ago was massively rigged and predicted fraud would be his "main adversary" on Thursday.
After voting in the Hydra district of the capital, Benflis said he had already been alerted to acts of fraud, having earlier warned that he would "not keep quiet" if the election is stolen.
