TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras _ Five days after Hondurans went to the polls to elect a president, the outcome remained unclear Friday as electoral authorities launched a count of thousands of disputed ballots amid protests and violence.
Protesters supporting the main opposition challenger, Salvador Nasralla, have alleged widespread fraud and vowed to push for a national strike if incumbent President Juan Orlando Hernandez is officially declared the winner.
With 94 percent of ballots counted, Hernandez had 42.9 percent of the vote, compared with 41.4 percent for Nasralla, the nation's Supreme Electoral Tribunal reported Friday afternoon.
The Central American nation of almost 9 million has been semi-paralyzed by protests and widespread street vandalism since the Sunday election.
Debris, rocks and broken glass _ the aftermath of large-scale street protests and clashes with police _ blocked main arteries in the capital, where many businesses, shops and schools were closed Friday because of the unrest.
A half-block stretch of several colonial-era buildings, including the Museum of Man _ which traced the history of the country from its first human settlement _ lay in smoldering ruins from fires that broke out Wednesday in the capital's historic center.
Police and soldiers in riot gear have used tear gas to disperse crowds of protesters, including hooded young men throwing stones and brandishing metal pipes.
Opposition activists blamed pro-government "provocateurs" for the vandalism and violence.
There have been no official counts of casualties in the unrest, but news accounts indicated that dozens had been injured and at least two killed. Authorities rounded up more than 50 people accused of vandalism in the northern city of San Pedro Sula.
All major political parties have denounced the violence.
"I am calling on all Hondurans to calmly and peacefully await the Supreme Electoral Tribunal's official results," the president said. "Now that the world's eyes are on us, we have the opportunity to set an example of civility, maturity and respect for one another."
Vote counts earlier in the week showed Nasralla with a substantial lead, but the tallies tilted in favor of the president after pauses in the release of results and reports of computer failures in the counting system.
The delays have left many suspecting that the voting process was manipulated in favor of Hernandez, a center-right figure whose leadership has been viewed favorably in Washington.
The vote tribunal chief, David Matamoros, said Friday that authorities would begin counting the results from 1,301 balloting tally sheets, representing almost 6 percent of the total vote. Opposition leaders suspect irregularities in those and other votes.
"We have very little faith in the official results," said Rodolfo Pastor, an official of the main opposition coalition, the Alliance Against the Dictatorship. "We can see an effort to manipulate with fraud the results."
Steven Levitsky, a Harvard professor who studies politics in Latin America, said the sudden halt in public releases of the vote tally "looks really fishy."
"This pattern of the incumbent beginning to lose or (falling) surprisingly behind, and then a computer crash ... it just happens too often in fraudulent elections to not be suspicious," he said.
The events recalled the notorious Mexican presidential election of 1988, when the long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party cited a computer glitch as the count stalled. The opposition alleged that the elections were rigged in favor of the ruling party, which managed to keep the presidency.
However, Levitsky said, if rural areas in Honduras were tallied after urban ones, the count reversal could be legitimate. The ruling party is stronger in areas outside cities, he said.
On Friday, the opposition set forth a new series of demands, including reviews of tens of thousands of other votes. There was no immediate response from the government.
In his statement, the voting tribunal chief _ who is close to the ruling party _ called for calm as the votes are counted.
"We call on the common sense of the two political candidates to maintain the peace and tranquility of the Honduran people," Matamoros said in a Twitter message.
Police in riot gear surrounded the national job-training institute where ballots from around the country were being stored and counted. In previous days, thousands of protesters had descended on the outskirts of the complex.
International organizations and foreign governments were urging Hondurans to remain peaceful.
On Friday, Heide Fulton, charge d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, tweeted that Honduras was entering "a new unprecedented phase in the electoral process." She called on all parties to "remain calm while the process unfolds."
A measure of political instability has troubled Honduras since a military-backed coup ousted leftist President Manuel Zelaya in 2009. That military action still reverberated in this week's election.
The opposition challenger, Nasralla _ a centrist television personality with limited political experience _ has Zelaya's support. Hernandez's party backed the military coup that removed Zelaya from office.
Hernandez has repeatedly denied charges of corruption and ties to the county's massive drug trafficking industry. Honduras is a major corridor for Colombian cocaine on its way to the United States. The country has also been plagued by internal violence and has one of the world's highest homicide rates.
