Millions of Congolese turned out enthusiastically to vote in their first free elections in 40 years today, protected by the world's biggest UN peacekeeping force and hoping to end years of war and chaos.
From Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital Kinshasa to the thick jungles of the Congo river basin and the mist-shrouded peaks of the east, they flocked to cast their ballots under the watchful eye of UN soldiers.
Congolese women wait in line to cast their votes at a polling station in the eastern Congo town of Goma
Voters appeared undeterred by fears of attacks by marauding rebels and militias and with Congolese police and UN soldiers on the alert, they turned out peacefully and in large numbers across the vast, mineral-rich former Belgian colony, witnesses and electoral officials said.
Schools, churches and tents had been transformed into 50,000 polling stations for more than 25 million voters.
Residents in the capital Kinshasa, many dressed in their Sunday best, lined up to vote as church bells pealed.
Voting appeared to be generally orderly. But complaints over irregularities and an opposition boycott have already raised the threat of violence and a rejection of the results, which are expected to be announced within three weeks.
More than 17,000 United Nations peacekeepers - backed by 1,000 European soldiers recently dispatched to the country - have been deployed to ensure voting takes place safely across the war-scarred country, the size of Western Europe.
The presidential and parliamentary polls are the culmination of a three-year peace process which ended Congo's last war - a 1998-2003 conflict that sucked in six neighboring countries and killed four million people, mostly from hunger and disease.
Congo is blessed with enormous mineral wealth - it holds one third of the world's cobalt reserves, as well as copper, gold and diamonds. But it has known little but war and dictatorship since independence in 1960.
President Joseph Kabila, who is viewed as favorite out of a field of 32 presidential candidates, voted in Kinshasa.
Other contenders include former rebel leaders, relatives of previous presidents and a Harvard-trained doctor. More than 9,700 other candidates are bidding for 500 parliament seats.