Northern Ireland casts votes in fractious snap election

Northern Ireland goes to the polls on Thursday for the second time in 10 months but there is little prospect that the outcome will fix the province's bitter political divisions.

The 2017 Assembly Election was called after the resignation of former deputy first minister Martin McGuinness.

The two main parties both claim they want a fresh power-sharing government installed as soon as possible.

Snap elections were called in January after long-simmering tensions boiled over between Catholic, Irish Republican socialists Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which is Protestant, conservative and pro-British in its outlook.

Sinn Fein's deputy first minister Martin McGuinness quit in January, saying he could no longer work with Northern Ireland's first minister Arlene Foster, the DUP leader.

McGuinness resigned in protest over a botched green heating scheme, the breaking point after months of tensions with the DUP.

Foster had instigated the scheme when she was the province's economy minister.

Polling stations open at 07:00am and will close at 11:00pm, with the counting of ballots set to begin on Friday morning.

Compared to the previous assembly election, this one will see a reduction in assembly members from 108 to 90. Northern Ireland's 18 constituencies will return five MLAs each, not six as was the case beforehand, in order to cut the cost of politics.

228 candidates are vying for a seat, a decrease of 48 candidates when compared to the election in May last year.