Updated | Libya goes to the polls amid threats of violence

Updated at 2:10pm

Regional, tribal, and ideological divisions have cast a shadow over the vote in Libya. However, the trnsitional government has praised the outcome of the election so far.

Speaking to reporters after casting his ballot in a station in the capital, Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib said: "We are celebrating today and we want the whole world to celebrate with us."

However, acts of sabotage, mostly in the east of the country, prevented 101 polling stations from opening on Saturday in Libya's first post-Gaddafi election, the electoral commission's chairman said.

"Ninety-four per cent of polling stations opened," Nuri al-Abbar told reporters in Tripoli, with voting underway in 1,453 out of 1,554 centres

Earlier

Libyans have begun voting in the country's first free national elections in over five decades amid violence by federalist protesters who threatened to boycott or even sabotage the vote.

Polls opened at 8am on Saturday and will close at 8pm as the interim government, represented by the National Transitional Council (NTC), declared election day and Sunday national public holidays for voters to exercise their civic duty.

Libyans are voting for a temporary assembly which will have the task of picking a cabinet and a prime minister.

But the vote has been overshadowed by violence and deep regional divisions. An electoral worker died on the eve of the vote when gunmen attacked a helicopter near Benghazi.

Many people in eastern Libya are concerned that the oil-rich area will be under-represented in the assembly.

The region has been allotted only 60 seats in the 200-seat assembly.

Under the system devised by the outgoing National Transitional Council (NTC), which led the campaign against Gaddafi, 100 seats are allocated to the west and 40 to the south.

The 2.8 million registered voters will elect a 200-seat General National Conference (GNC that will replace the unelected interim government that has ruled the country after the revolution against Libya's ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Public service commercials on how the voting process works have been running on TV to support voters ahead of the elections. A large majority of Libyans will be going to the polls in the first time in their lives.

At the Taquddum School voting station in downtown Tripoli, a long line queued up at the female entrance to the facility, as people sought to beat the midday heat, expected to reach 44 degrees Celsius on Saturday.

The NTC has allotted seats in the GNC according to population, a democratic principle that is viewed with mistrust by the less-populated east.

Federalist protesters in Benghazi broke into the local election offices on Sunday and ransacked them. On Thursday, protesters set fire to a warehouse in the eastern city of Ajdabiya where ballot papers and other campaign material were stored.

It is almost impossible to predict the outcome of the vote, as Libya is hardly familiar with pre-election opinion surveys or exit polls, but it seems likely that the Justice and Construction Party, widely considered being the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, will gain substantial influence in the assembly.