Algeria held a presidential election Thursday that has been fiercely opposed by a nine-month-old protest movement and was hit by unrest at several provincial polling stations.
The demonstrators who forced ageing president Abdelaziz Bouteflika to resign his two-decade tenure in April have pushed on with weekly rallies to demand far more sweeping reforms to the political system ahead of any vote.
Shortly after polls opened, attackers "ransacked the ballot boxes and destroyed part of the electoral lists" in the disaffected northern mountain region of Kabylie, home to much of the country's Berber minority, a resident of the city of Bejaia told AFP.
Elsewhere in Kabylie, a large crowd surrounded a polling station in the city of Tizi Ouzou and protesters also took to the streets of Bouira, witnesses said.
