Voters flee after grenades explode near a polling booth, police shoot dead a politician's bogyguards and soldiers slug it out with the suspected private army of a local warlord.
It's another typically violent election day in the Philippines.
Politics often turns into a bloodsport in this gun-crazy Southeast Asian country, and tensions inevitably peaked for Monday's elections withmore than 17,000 positions from president to town councillor being contested.
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In the restive south of the Philippines -- home to Muslim rebels, brutal warlords and communist insurgents -- at least six people were killed while other outbursts of violence intimidated voters.
Unknown assailants exploded two rocket-propelled grenades on the outskirts of the remote farming town of Datu Piang shortly after polls opened, with the blasts apparently having their intended effect of scaring away voters.
A polling station was quickly evacuated and, in fact, most of Datu Piang's few hundred residents fled the town.
"We don't want to get caught in a cross fire. I have five children and my husband is away," said Bai Dido Aliman, as she hauled the family's meagre belongings including clothes and kitchen ware into a tricycle.
Datu Piang is in Maguindanao province, which rose to global infamy last year when 57 people, including 31 journalists, were massacred allegedly by a Muslim clan to stop a rival politician's election challenge.
The Ampatuan clan accused of carrying out the massacre remains a powerful force in Maguindanao despite its leaders being in jail awaiting trial for murder.
The patriarch of the clan and governor of Maguindanao at the time of the massacre, Andal Ampatuan Snr, is in fact running from behind bars for the post of vice governor.
It also still runs its own "private army" believed to number hundreds of men, part of a grisly phenomenonen in the Philippines in which politicians use militias to kill rivals or intimidate voters.
The military said it had deployed more than 4,000 troops across Maguindanao to try and minimise the violence between rival politicians' militias.
"We are doing our best to prevent anything worse from happening and to keep the peace," said Lieutenant Colonel Gene Ponio, a commander of one of the army battalions deployed in the province.
Soldiers were forced to engage in a series of gunbattles with the unknown assailants behind the grenade blasts at Datu Piang, as well as another bomb explosion in the nearby town of Datu Unsay Ampatuan.
Meanwhile, two people were killed elsewhere in Maguindanao as armed groups belonging to rival candidates for the post of a town vice mayor engaged in a gunbattle.
There was more bloodshed in other parts of the southern Philippines' Mindanao region.
Three people were shot dead and 10 others wounded when police clashed with the security force of a mayoral candidate in Zamboanga Sibugay province before dawn, local military spokesman Captain Arnold Gasalatan said.
Police raided the compound of the candidate, whose gunmen and supporters suffered all the casualties, Gasalatan said.
The cause of the clash was unclear but the police were ordered back to their stations, he said, adding the military had secured the area pending an investigation.
And on Sunday, a grenade was lobbed into a North Cotabato mosque during evening prayer, killing two people and wounding about 12 others.
"The blast was so loud we were shook out of our houses. Why are they attacking civilians? Are Muslims not allowed peace?," said Isradil Abdullah, 27, whose husband Muhammad was among those wounded in the blast.
"We don't care about politics, we just want to live quietly."
