KINSHASA: Western embassies in Democratic Republic of Congo urged restraint after leading opposition members called this week's election a "sham", some calling for it to be annulled.
Five opposition leaders called in a joint statement for a protest march next Wednesday.
One election officer meanwhile said late voting in a few places in the country's far east had been authorised for Sunday.
In a joint statement on Saturday, 12 European embassies in the capital Kinshasa, and the Canadian Embassy, called for calm.
"So long as the vote count is continuing, we call on all the parties involved... to show restraint," they wrote.
Around 44 million people in the nation of 100 million were registered to vote, with more than 100,000 candidates running for various positions.
President Felix Tshisekedi, 60, is running for re-election against 18 opposition candidates.
The sheer scale of the DRC -- roughly the size of continental western Europe -- and its dire infrastructure make elections a stark logistical challenge.
Massive delays and bureaucratic chaos marred the vote on Wednesday, with election authorities struggling to transport voting materials to polling stations on time. Some stations were unable to open at all.
Officially, the country's electoral commission, Ceni, extended the vote only until Thursday for stations that had been unable to open on polling day.
But ballots were still being cast on Saturday in remote areas, according to some officials, in a sign of continuing difficulties.
And Macaire Kambau Sivikunula, an election official in the North Kivu region in the east of the country, said that Ceni had granted special permission for five voting stations to open on Sunday for voting.
Failure to get voting up and running on schedule had led to him and his family and other election officials receiving death threats, he added.
Five opposition leaders said in a statement that they were organising a protest march for next Wednesday.
They included gynaecologist Denis Mukwege, the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize laureate; and former oil executive Martin Fayulu.
"We will protest against the irregularities noted during the voting operations," they wrote in a letter to the governor of Kinshasa.
Five other opposition candidates, including business magnate and former provincial governor Moise Katumbi, released a separate statement calling for the vote to be annulled, saying it had been marred by "massive fraud". — AFP
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