The Constitutional Council announced this in its official results, adding that Rival candidate and former government minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary came second with 35.2 per cent.

According to reports, Chiroma had claimed victory against the incumbent two days after the October 12 election.

Earlier, four people were killed in clashes between security forces and supporters of a Cameroon opposition leader who claims to have won the recent presidential elections, authorities said ahead of the announcement of official results on Monday.

Tchiroma, who challenged President Paul Biya’s 43-year grip on power in the October 12 ballot, had called on his supporters to march peacefully on the eve of the announcement, despite a ban on public gatherings.

In Cameroon’s largest city, Douala, the regional governor said demonstrators “attacked” a gendarmerie brigade and police stations in two districts on Sunday.

“Four people, unfortunately, lost their lives,” said Samuel Dieudonne Ivaha Diboua, adding that several members of the security forces were also injured.

Protesters at the scene showed journalists bullet casings they said they collected after security forces fired shots near the gendarmerie.

According to a demonstrator who spoke on condition of anonymity, the shooting with “live ammunition” began after a volley of tear gas.

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“They fired, three people, three bodies fell in front of us,” he said.

Biya, the world’s oldest serving head of state,  secured another seven-year term in a system that critics say has been increasingly rigged, being the only second head of state to lead Cameroon since independence from France in 1960.

Source: Punch