Algeria's Bouteflika on course for election win

By Christian Lowe and Hamid Ould Ahmed

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was on course for an emphatic election win after official turnout figures on Thursday indicated a limited response to opposition calls for a boycott.

But bomb blasts at a polling station east of the capital wounded two policemen and underscored the challenges Bouteflika faces in trying to stamp out a lingering Islamist insurgency in his country across the Mediterranean from the European Union.

Victory for Bouteflika, a 72-year-old veteran of Algeria's war for independence from France, was never in doubt but many analysts predicted a low turnout would harm the president's legitimacy in the eyes of some of Algeria's 34 million people.

Some of Bouteflika's opponents, including the leader of al Qaeda's North African wing, urged people to stay at home, tapping into a sense among some voters that the election will do nothing to relieve widespread poverty and joblessness.

Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni said 74.11 percent of voters had cast their ballots -- exceeding the Bouteflika campaign's target of matching the 58.1 percent turnout at the last presidential election.

Zerhouni told a news conference he hoped to announced the winner of the vote at 10 a.m. (10:00 a.m. British time) on Friday.

Algerian lawmakers cleared the way for Bouteflika to stand for a third term last year by abolishing term limits, a move critics said could allow him to serve as president for life.

"The high participation seems to be a message to those who hoped for a low turnout to harm the credibility of the election," political science professor Ismail Maaref Ghalia told Reuters.