The opposition party of Mali presidential election candidate Soumaila Cisse says the poll will go to a run-off between him and President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, based on a count done by its own party agents.
Cisse's campaign manager Tiebele Drame made the announcement at the party's headquarters in the capital Bamako, a day after Malians voted in a poll marred by widespread disruption by Islamist gunmen across its north and centre.
The Ministry of Territorial Administration said attacks by gunmen and other violence had disrupted around a fifth of Mali's polling stations, with about three per cent unable to function at all.
Spiralling jihadist violence has become a key issue in the campaign of several opposition candidates competing with Keita as attacks multiply and the death toll mounts across north and central Mali.
"The law forbids the proclamation of results by anyone except the Ministry of Territorial Administration," Cisse's campaign manager Drame told a news conference.
"However, I can tell you that we are going to a second round between Soumaila Cisse and Ibrahim Boubacar Keita."
Of the roughly 23,000 polling stations that were meant to open, 4632 were disrupted by "armed attacks or other violence", of which 644 were unable to operate, ministry figures showed.
In most of Mali, the vote was peaceful and relatively well-organised, with polls opening and closing on time. Most people who were enrolled and turned up were able to vote.
But the number of disenfranchised voters, even if small, could become a flashpoint if the result is very close. Counting is under way but official results may not come out for another day or even longer.
In the mud-walled medieval city of Timbuktu, once a flourishing tourist spot, witnesses said gunmen had intimidated voters, seized ballot boxes and in some cases set fire to them in the few polling stations that were attacked outside town.
Islamist militants took over northern cities like Timbuktu in 2012 on the back of a Tuareg rebellion, imposing Sharia law with harsh penalties like cutting off fingers for smoking, until France intervened a year later to push them back. They regard democracy as an un-Islamic Western imposition.
But since Keita, known by his initials "IBK", came to power in the 2013 poll, Islamist violence has swept south into Mali's fertile centre.
