A day after Catholic bishops in Mozambique rejected general elections results as fraudulent and manipulated, poll violence had loomed large in the southeastern African country, also beset by an Islamist insurgency in the north.

The bishops had urged the electoral commission and other electoral bodies Oct. 23 not to "certify a lie", but late Oct. 24, the institutions announced Daniel Chapo of Mozambique's Liberation Front, or Frelimo, the ruling party, as the presidential winner of Oct. 9 elections.

"Certifying a lie is fraud," Archbishop Inacio Saure of Nampula, the president of Mozambique's bishops' conference, cautioned in a statement which highlighted ballot box stuffing, forged polling station result sheets, among other election malpractices. Half of the registered voters did not cast their ballot, the worst scenario in the country's multiparty election history.

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The election prompted protests across the country, as it was marred by allegations of rigging and the killing of opposition supporters.

According to the archbishop, the irregularities and fraud -- carried out with impunity -- had reinforced the lack of trust in the electoral bodies and leaders, who abdicated their dignity and disregarded the truth and the sense of service.

"The application of electoral law in the vote counting phase at (the)national level by the competent authorities alone cannot guarantee reliable results, if the data is not reliable," said Archbishop Saure.

Chapo, a little-known 47-year-old politician, had garnered 71% of the votes, while his closest challenger, Venâncio Mondlane, an independent candidate, got 20%.

Soon after the Oct. 24 announcement, angry crowds poured onto the streets, protesting the allegedly fraudulent results.

In Maputo, the capital, protests turned violent overnight, with opposition supporters rejecting the results as stolen. The demonstrators accused the electoral commission of acting in favor of the ruling party. Some had set tires on fire, blocked roads and brought down Frelimo billboards.According to 2020 data from the National Statistics Institute, 62% of citizens in Mozambique are Christian, with an evangelical and pentecostal majority and 27% of them being Catholic.

From 1977-1992, the country experienced a prolonged civil war between Mozambique Liberation Front (known as Frelimo) and Mozambican National Resistance (known as Renamo).

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The bishops warned against taking the country back to violence.

"Mozambique must not return to violence," said Archbishop Saure. "Our country deserves truth, peace, tranquility and tolerance. Let us pray for peace, let us be artisans of justice and witness to the truth."

In a statement signed by the conference's president, the bishops also condemned the murder of two opposition leaders, Elvino Dias and Paulo Guambe. Dias was a lawyer for the independent candidate Mondlane and the main opposition party, Podemos. Reports suggest that Dias was preparing to launch an opposition election appeal in court, but was killed in an ambush by men in a car on Oct. 19 in Maputo.

Archbishop Saure said the bishops condemned "the barbaric murder of the two political figures, which clearly recalls, with similarities in method, other murders of political or civil society figures, also linked to opposition parties that occurred in previous elections."

European Union observers in the country called for restraint following the killings. The E.U. had also called for a transparent and credible tabulation for trust and integrity of the process.

Meanwhile, Bishop António Juliasse of the northern Diocese of Pemba told pontifical charity Aid to the Church in Need on Oct. 21 that people in his diocese have experienced hardship and affliction since October 2017, when the Islamist insurgency started.

The bishop said that for seven years, the community had faced death, displacement, hunger, disease, lack of medication, and were unable to farm their land because of insecurity.

"Seven years during which children have not been able to study as they should," said Bishop Juliasse.

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The insurgency by the Islamic State group-linked Al-Shabaab organization has killed an estimated 5,000 people and left over one million displaced in the Mozambique northernmost province of Cabo Delgado.

Although, analysts say, the foreign Islamist fighters have joined the insurrection in the name of jihad, or holy war of extremist Muslims, most of the fighters from Mozambique are believed to have been motivated by social and economic exclusion, amid the new and major discoveries of minerals and gas in the region.