Operation Oil Theft: Month 17, Week 5, Day 1.

Technically polling stations in Libya's election should have closed at 18:00(GMT) today (7/7/12). However as this has been Libya's first election there have understandably been some problems. As a result most polling stations remained open until 23:00. In Brega polling stations were unable to open until the late afternoon so will remain open overnight.

Obviously with voting still going on I can't really write up a round of events until tomorrow (8/7/12) at the earliest. However through-out the day there have been four confirmed reports of serious, armed violence all in the eastern Cyrenacia region;

• In Brega armed men hijacked electoral commission vehicles and stole the ballot papers they were carrying. The ballot paper were replaced but this delayed the opening of polling stations.

• In Gahmines armed men stormed two polling stations and stole ballot papers. I have not yet heard if the missing ballot papers were replaced to allow voting.

• In Ras Lanuf armed men stopped people entering a polling station. Although I've not had it confirmed I believe this was only for a short time and the polling station was able to re-open.

• In Ajdabiya there was a shooting at a polling station killing one. However again I believe that the polling station was able to re-open.

Despite these confirmed incidents and a few further that have been rumoured but not confirmed the electoral commission are confident that voting took place without obvious, significant problems at 94% of polling stations. They have also estimated a voter turn-out of 60% but that may rise as people continue to vote. That sounds like a good result to me and certainly a lot better then things were under Qaddafi.