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Police and protesters clashed Sunday night in Belarus after longtime authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko appears headed for a huge win in the presidential election despite a strong push by the opposition.
About 1,000 protesters gathered in Minsk near an obelisk honoring the city. Police beat them with batons and used flash grenades and water cannons to disperse the protesters, who tried to build barricades with garbage cans.
Protests were held in other Belarusian cities including Gomel, Grodno, Vitebsk and Brest, where tear gas was reportedly fired.
It is unclear how many people were arrested but Ales Bilyatsky of the Viasna human rights group told The Associated Press that he believed there were several hundred arrests.
Some witnesses said they saw some police lowering their shields and refusing to engage with the marchers.
Lukashenko said earlier Sunday that he will not tolerate demonstrators and warned that police will be tough.
"If you provoke, you will get the same answer," he said. "Do you want to try to overthrow the government, break something, wound, offend, and expect me or someone to kneel in front of you and kiss them and the sand onto which you wandered? This will not happen."
Exit polls and the election commission are giving Lukashenko about 80% of the vote and the only opposition candidate to seriously challenge him, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a scant 7%.
Three other candidates were token challengers.
Final results are expected Monday but are unlikely to be radically different.
Police had arrested several members of Tsikhanouskaya's staff just before the election and one of her aides fled the country.
She has already said she does not recognize the outcome.
"I believe my eyes, and I see that the majority is with us," Tsikhanouskaya said from her headquarters.
Voter turnout is reported to be high. Pictures of voters lined up to cast ballots Sunday showed only a handful wearing masks. Lukashenko has generally dismissed the coronavirus as a "psychosis" and has taken almost no action to stop the spread - one of the issues that energized the opposition.
Belarus did not invite independent European monitors to watch the vote. But election observers say Belarus has a long history of voting that is neither free nor fair.
Tsikhanouskaya entered the race after her husband, opposition blogger and presidential hopeful Sergei Tsikhanousky, was arrested in May. Police charged him with attacking an officer and organizing mass unrest. He denies both charges.
Tens of thousands of Belarusians back Tsikhanouskaya. As she cast her ballot Sunday, she demanded that official results free of fraud.
Tsikhanouskaya emerged as the only serious opposition candidate and won tens of thousands of supporters after election officials refused to register two other potential presidential challengers -- Valery Tsepkalo, a former diplomat and Viktor Babary, an ex-banker, who is now in jail.
Lukashenko has been in power since Belarus declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
He has long been a target of Western criticism for his iron fist rule, suppression of free speech, and showing little tolerance to any opposition.
But in recent years, Lukashenko has sought to shake his image as a brutal dictator who cozies up to Moscow by saying he would like better relations with the United States.