At least one protester has died, over 20 people have been injured and more than 100 others arrested for looting in Honduras after a delayed and disputed presidential vote count sparked unrest amid opposition accusations of electoral fraud.
Honduras was due to publish the final result of last Sunday's presidential election at 9pm (local time) on Friday, the electoral tribunal said, but opposition complaints about the count appeared set to impede that.
Election results initially favoured opposition candidate and TV star Salvador Nasralla by five points with more than half the votes counted. They then swung in favour of US-backed centre-right President Juan Orlando Hernandez after the count came to a halt on Monday and resumed over a day later, sparking protests.
The tribunal has said it will hand-count some 1,031 outstanding ballot boxes with irregularities - or nearly six per cent of the total - after the count halted with Hernandez ahead by less than 50,000 votes, or about 1.5 percentage points.
However, Nasralla's centre-left alliance has called for votes to be recounted in three of Honduras' 18 departments, or regions, and refused to recognise the tribunal's special count until its demands for a wider review were met.
"If Juan Orlando wins, we're ready to accept that, but we know that wasn't the case, we know that Salvador won and that's why they're refusing the transparency demands," said Marlon Ochoa, campaign manager of Nasralla's alliance.
International concern has grown about the electoral crisis in the poor Central American country, which struggles with violent drug gangs and one of the world's highest murder rates.
