Bangkok:
The main military-backed party won an overwhelming victory in the first election in 20 years in Myanmar, according to international news agency reports from inside the country, in a vote that was carefully engineered by the military to assure its continued grip on power.
Although there has been no government announcement, officials of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party claimed victory with 80 percent of the vote, according to the reports from Myanmar, and the leaders of the two main opposition parties conceded defeat.
The outcome had been a foregone conclusion, with the election rules slanted to favor two military-backed parties and with opposition parties each contesting only a small fraction of the seats.
As the votes were being counted, Myanmar Army troops battled ethnic Karen rebels who had taken over the post office and police station in the border town of Myawaddy.
As many as 20,000 refugees have fled across a river into Thailand since the fighting broke out Sunday, but the violence appeared to have died down Tuesday and the refugees were returning home.
More than a dozen people were reported to have been wounded, a few of them in Thailand, by stray gunfire and rockets.
The election was widely seen as an attempt to legitimize military rule behind a mask of civilian government, after a half century of unambiguous military rule in the former Burma. The National League for Democracy, headed by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, declined to take part, saying campaign rules were undemocratic and unfair.
Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi's party won the last election, in 1990, but the military annulled the result and clung to power. She has been held under house arrest for most of the last 20 years. Her latest term of house arrest expires on Saturday, and there is a possibility that the junta will free her now that the election is over.
International reaction was sharply split between Myanmar's big neighbor and supporter, China, and Western nations that have pursued a policy of isolation and sanctions against Myanmar.
China praised the election Tuesday, one day after the United States and the United Nations issued strong statements condemning it. Yet, Myanmar's neighbors in Southeast Asia, who have wavered between acceptance and criticism of the ruling junta, also welcomed the elections.
On Monday, President Obama said, "It is unacceptable to steal an election, as the regime in Burma has done for all the world to see."
In a statement, the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, said the vote was "insufficiently inclusive, participatory and transparent."
The fighting on the border was a reminder of a civil war with a number of ethnic groups that has raged since Burma won independence from Britain in 1948 in remote mountains and jungles, far from the politics that consume the cities. Continuing unrest in parts of the minority ethnic areas led the government to exclude some 1.5 million people from the election.
The people fleeing into the Thai border town of Mae Sot were the latest wave of refugees who have sought safety over the years in camps along the border. Thai officials said they would be sent back when the situation returned to normal.
By Tuesday, the government appeared to have taken control, and the fighting had subsided to smaller clashes along the river, including the area of Three Pagoda Pass, according to reports from the border. At least five Thai villagers were wounded when rocket-propelled grenades landed near Mae Sot, the Thai military said.
The Irrawaddy, a Thailand-based magazine with contacts inside Myanmar, reported that as many as 20 people were wounded in Myawaddy and that some may have been killed.
The attackers were a breakaway group of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, which has given up a longstanding demand for independence and is now seeking autonomy under the umbrella of the national government.
Like some other ethnic groups, it has reached a cease-fire with the government forces. But many in these groups are angry at attempts by the military to absorb them into a border guard force, and the current fighting could be linked to that grievance.