Yemen president set for victory

[bemildred]

Counting has started in the Yemeni elections, with Ali Abdullah Saleh, the country's incumbent president, looking set for re-election.

With four per cent of the country's 27,000 ballot boxes counted on Thursday, Saleh had 82 per cent of the votes with Faisal al-Shamlan, the leading opposition candidate, trailing with 16 per cent.

Khalid Sharif, an official in the election commission, said: "Roughly five million of the 9.2 million eligible Yemenis cast ballots." He did not say which areas the boxes came from.

Al Jazeera