(LUANDA) - The head of the European Union observer mission in Angola told AFP on Friday that the organisation of Angola's first peacetime poll after a devastating 27-year civil was was a "disaster."

"What we have seen in the three polling stations we have visited in Luanda, is a disaster. They have not started voting yet. They did not prepare," EU observer mission chief Luisa Morgantini said.

Many polling stations were still not open an hour-and-a-half after the official start of the poll at 7:00 am (0600 GMT) she said.

"They didn't prepare all the equipment yesterday. They started to prepare only at 6:00 am this morning," Morgantini said.

"It's a total mess," she said, adding that many polling stations did not even have a list of voters.

In a polling station in the middle class neighbourhood of Maianga where officials did not yet have an electoral roll list, poll workers were letting people vote and taking down their registration numbers in order to cross them off the list later.

"The efficiency that we have seen during the campaign, you don't see it on the ground. You see confusion," the EU mission chief said.

However, she added that the EU observers in the rest of the country had not reported similar problems.

"It seems that the main problem is Luanda," she said.

Just over 20 percent of the country's eight million voters are registered in the capital.

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