Emmerson Mnangagwa, incumbent President of Zimbabwe, was Thursday night declared winner of the country’s presidential election.

The results were as announced by the electoral commission.

Mnangagwa received 51% of the vote, said Priscilla Chigumba, commission chairwoman.

The results, rather than bring cheers to many Zimbabweans, appear to have been become kicker for rising tension as the opposition party has roundly rejected the outcomes, promising to seek every legal means to upturn them.

CNN reports that opposition party members who questioned the count were escorted out of the room before the final vote was announced amid fears of further unrest and claims of vote-rigging by Mnangagwa’s opponents.

Mnangagwa beat out Nelson Chamisa, 40, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Chamisa received 44% of the vote.

On Wednesday, six people were killed in clashes between opposition protesters and security forces in the capital Harare, prompting statements of concern from the United States, the United Nations and the United Kingdom.

The bloodshed cast a pall over Monday’s elections, the first since veteran leader Mugabe was deposed.

Read Also: Zimbabwe boils! All you want to know about the elections

Soldiers spent Thursday morning clearing the central business district of Harare and warning people to leave by noon. Taxi ranks were full of commuters attempting to find a way out. Shop fronts were locked, and riot police surrounded the headquarters of the opposition MDC and blocked off nearby streets.

Police arrested 18 people during a raid at the MDC headquarters, Zimbabwe Republic Police spokeswoman Charity Charamba said. The charges were not immediately clear, but Charamba said, in total, officers have taken into custody 26 people suspected of inciting violence during Wednesday’s protests.

International monitors had called on officials to publish the results of the closely fought presidential race promptly. Partial results of the parliamentary vote, announced Wednesday, gave Zanu-PF two-thirds of the seats in the National Assembly’s lower house but prompted accusations of poll-rigging.

As police surrounded the MDC building on Thursday, the party’s spokesman had insisted that Chamisa was set to win the presidential vote.

“We have collated results from the 80% of the polling stations that we’re allowed to do so and we’re very clear that we’re going to win,” MDC spokesman Nkululeko Sibanda told CNN.

Chamisa himself tweeted Wednesday that he had won the presidential vote, even though results had not yet been released by the electoral commission.