International observers said last month's polls in Guinea had been marred by irregularities, boosting calls by opposition leaders meeting Wednesday for the much-delayed election to be annulled.

The region's top diplomats said the flaws were serious enough to affect the credibility of the vote, held on September 28 after bitter political and ethnic divisions delayed it by more than two years.

Guinea's main opposition parties on Thursday withdrew representatives overseeing the counting of votes in a legislative election they have said was riddled with fraud, calling the process a "joke".

"We have asked our representatives at the national commission of vote centralization to withdraw," former prime minister and opposition coalition spokesman Sidya Toure told Agence France Presse.

Guinean President Alpha Conde on Wednesday urged party leaders to accept the results of September 28 legislative polls, as security was ramped up in the capital amid fears of violence.

With results trickling in, Conde praised the vote as the dawn of democracy in the chronically unstable west African nation.

Guinea's electoral commission said on Tuesday it would not consider accusations of electoral fraud by the country's main opposition until a final tally of votes cast on September 28 was finished.

"If they (the opposition parties) have results they want to contest, we don't know anything about it," said the commission's top lawyer, Amadou Kebe.

Polling stations began to shut across Guinea Saturday with no violence reported in the restive west African nation's first parliamentary election in more than a decade, according to Agence France Presse journalists.

Voters had a choice of more than 1,700 candidates vying for 114 seats in a national assembly, which will replace the transitional body that has been running the country since military rule came to an end in 2010.

Guineans went to the polls on Saturday in the first parliamentary elections for more than a decade in the troubled west African nation, after months of delays and a campaign plagued by deadly unrest.

Voters have a choice of more than 1,700 candidates vying for 114 seats in a national assembly which will replace the transitional parliament that has been running the country since military rule came to an end in 2010.

Opposition protesters shot dead a trainee policeman and wounded two other officers as renewed violence broke out Monday in Guinea's capital Conakry, five days ahead of elections, the government said.

The demonstrators opened fire as the police were breaking through one of numerous barricades put up across the city as the anti-government protests spiraled out of control, a spokesman for the administration said in a statement.

The Guinean opposition said Saturday that elections set for next week cannot go forward, citing anomalies in preparations for the vote in the west African nation.

"We have many corrections to make, both to the ballots and polling stations and in terms of duplications," said Sidya Toure, head of the Union of Republican Forces.

Pro-government and opposition supporters clashed on the streets of Guinea's capital on Monday, medical and police sources said, sparking fears over unrest in the west African nation a week ahead of nationwide elections.

Guinea's largest market was forced to close and traders fled to safety as rioters pelted cars with stones and looted stores in Conakry's busy Madina district, an Agence France Presse reporter on the scene witnessed.

A total of 58 bodies of victims of a sudden outbreak of ethnic violence in Guinea has been identified with help from the Red Cross, the government spokesman said.

"Calm has returned to the center of N'Zerekore", the biggest town in the southern forest region, "where the army has been deployed. With the help of the Red Cross, we have identified 58 bodies", Albert Damantang Camara told journalists on Thursday night.