France, March 19 -- Sassou Nguesso won 94.82 percent of the vote in Sunday's election, Interior Minister Raymond Zephirin Mboulou said on state television Tuesday.

The 82-year-old incumbent faced six little-known challengers in a race whose run-up was tightly managed by the ruling Congolese Labour Party.

Sassou's closest challenger, Mabio Mavoungou Zinga of the Alliance party came in second with 1.48 percent of votes, closely followed by independent candidate Uphrem Dave Mafoula who received 1.03 percent, according to the provisional results. The other four candidates got less than 1 percent of the vote.

Defeated candidates have five days to file a challenge, and the Constitutional Court has 15 days to examine them before publishing fi...