Gabon's ruling party wins big majority

Provisional results in Gabon's parliamentary election suggest that the ruling party has maintained its sizeable majority in parliament.

The results, announced by the national electoral commission, suggest that the Gabonese Democratic Party of President Omar Bongo has so far won 84 of the 120 seats.

The opposition parties, some of whom called for an election boycott, are on course to win only 12 seats.

There has to be a re-run of the election in a number of districts, where the first round of voting was marred by violence. In another district voting was postponed because of an outbreak of the Ebola virus which killed thirteen people.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service