Democratic Republic of Congo's President Joseph Kabila had an early lead in partial election results released, after a poll marred by confusion, violence and fraud allegations.

Veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi is currently Kabila's nearest challenger, according to the Reuters tally of official results released by the election commission for 15 percent of the country's 63,000 polling stations.

Hacked results
Vote organisers released a selection of results early to counter a flood of false figures, currently circulating in text messages and on web pages, that have stoked tensions.

Hackers managed to publish fake results on the election commission's official website that appeared to give Tshisekedi a strong lead. "We've been hacked, these people are dishonest," commission spokesman Matthieu Mpita said.

Million votes counted
At least 18 people died in violence during the run-up to the Democratic Republic of Congo's elections, with most shot dead by soldiers from Joseph Kabila's presidential guard, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said earlier in the day.

The elections, seen as crucial to stabilising the vast central African country.

According to the tally of figures read out at a news conference by national election commission chief Daniel Mulunda Ngoy, Kabila was leading with 1,523,095 votes, or 51.8 percent of the 2.94 million votes counted so far.

Results on 6 Dec
Tshisekedi was on 997,071 votes, or 33.9 percent. However the tally so far included virtually no results from

Complete provisional results are due on December 6 and then they must be confirmed by the Supreme Court.

Source: Reuters