BBC News with Marion Marshall.

Counting is underway in Kenya following the first general elections to be held there since the bitterly contested poll of 2007. Voting had to be extended in some places after long queues formed. The race for the presidency is expected to be tight with the Prime Minister Raila Odinga being challenged by his deputy Uhuru Kenyatta. The BBC’s Anne Soy is at the national counting centre in the capital Nairobi.

So far Uhuru Kenyatta is in the lead with just over 650,000 votes. Raila Odinga is following at 450,000. Now it’s still very significant given that Kenya has 14.3 million registered voters. And according to the electoral commission that just gave a statement about half an hour ago, they expect that the voter turnout would be well over 70 per cent—those are the early indications, but could be higher once the results are released.

Iraqi officials say at least 40 Syrians and seven Iraqis have been killed in an ambush by gunmen in the Iraqi province of Anbar. The convoy was attacked with mortar rounds and automatic weapons. James Reynolds reports.

Initial reports say that a number of Syrian soldiers escaped into northern Iraq following heavy fighting against rebels in their own country. One report suggests that Iraqi officials took the soldiers further south and arranged for them to cross from the Sunni-majority Anbar province back into Syria. But reports say that the soldiers’ convoy was ambushed before it crossed the border. The identity of the assailants is not yet clear. Some Sunni Muslims in Iraq sympathise with the Sunni rebels in Syria, who are fighting against the government of Bashar al-Assad.