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BAMAKO. — Malians voted in a crucial election runoff yesterday that has been marred by allegations of fraud and a tense security situation in the vast West African country.

It is holding a second election after the 24 candidates who competed for the top seat failed to get more than the required 50 percent of votes in the first round last month.

Turnout was low in the first round at about 40 percent.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who won 41 percent of the vote in July’s poll, is favoured to beat Soumaila Cisse, who garnered 18 percent, even though violence has surged during his tenure.

The chaotic first round was a reminder that fighters — some linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) — have regrouped since a French intervention in 2013, and are now expanding their influence across Mali’s desert north and into the fertile centre.

Dramane Camara (31), was the first to vote at one polling station in a school in the capital, Bamako.

“I voted without problem, I came to fulfill my duty as a citizen,” Camara said. “I expect the new president to solve the problem of the north, which is peace. Because the return of peace means the return of NGOs, investors, so creating jobs.”

Yesterday’s vote was a rerun of a 2013 face-off that Keita won by a landslide over Mali’s former finance minister Cisse.

It is the first time in Mali’s history that an incumbent president has had to face a runoff. More than nine million people registered to take part in the election.

July’s poll was marred by armed attacks and other security incidents that disrupted about one-fifth of polling places — or 644 stations — and the threat of violence could again dampen turnout on Sunday.

Civil society website Malilink recorded 932 attacks in the first half of 2018, almost double that for all of 2017.

On Saturday, Malian security forces said they arrested three men accused of “plotting targeted attacks” in Bamako.

The first round of voting was followed by fraud allegations. Last week, Cisse reportedly mounted a legal challenge in Mali’s constitutional court alleging “ballot box-stuffing”.

On Wednesday, the court said it had registered more than 10 requests from the opposition over anomalies in the first round of voting but that most were declared inadmissible because of timing.

Presidential spokesman Mahamadou Camara denied the fraud allegations.

“All the observers, international and national said that the election was good,” he told Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Vall in Bamako.

“There were some places in the country where people couldn’t vote and the government is trying to change that.

“When the opposition is saying that there was allegation of fraud, it’s because they know that they can’t win this election,” he said.

The head of the EU observer mission said there had been no major incidents at 40 polling stations it had monitored. —Al-Jazeera/News Agencies