The party of Armenia’s acting PM Nikol Pashinyan has won snap elections, the country’s electoral commission says. Preliminary results from all 2,008 polling stations give the Civil Contract party 54%, it says.

The opposition Armenia alliance led by ex-President Robert Kocharyan is a distant second with 21%. The block has alleged election fraud. The vote was called after Armenia’s defeat in a war with Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Last year, Azerbaijan regained control of large swathes of the mountainous region, which it lost to Armenia during the first Nagorno-Karabakh war in 1988-94. The region is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan.(BBC)…[+]