BATTICALOA, Sri Lanka - Allegations of fraud, voter intimidation and sporadic violence marred elections in Sri Lanka's east Saturday despite the government's claims they would be a celebration of democracy for the region recently liberated from the Tamil Tiger rebels.

The vote was intended to show that a "new dawn" was coming to the impoverished area, to give minority communities a degree of self-rule and to counter rebel demands for an independent state.

Many voters said the new provincial government should focus on ending the chaos and violence in the east, which is divided among Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim communities.

"We hope things will be straightened out," said a doctor voting in the town of Batticaloa, who, like nearly every other voter interviewed, declined to give his name out of fear of reprisals.

The government, with the help of a breakaway group of former rebels known as the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal, or TMVP, seized control of the province late last year after 13 years of rebel rule.

Civil war continues to rage around the separatists' de facto state in the north.

The ruling party ran in a coalition with the TMVP, which has been accused of threatening voters and opposition candidates, while the main opposition United National Party joined with the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress.

Independent monitors said the election went smoothly in some areas, but quickly unravelled in others.

Kingsley Rodrigo, head of the People's Action for Free and Fair Elections, an independent monitoring group, said the TMVP was threatening and intimidating voters across the province Saturday.

"There are many, many violations taking place," he said.

The former rebels have been accused by residents and international rights groups of waging a campaign of terror since the rebels were ousted, killing opponents, extorting money from businessmen and forcibly conscripting new recruits - some of them children.

Other monitors reported gangs of people shuttling between polling stations to vote numerous times in the Valaichchenai region north of Batticaloa.

The perpetrators each held a series of false identity cards signed by local officials saying they lived in each polling district, said Sunanda Deshapriya, an official with the independent Center for Monitoring Election Violence.

"At almost every station (in the area), stuffing is taking place," he said.

Opposition observers were also threatened and forced to leave many polling stations, he said. The monitors called for a revote in the affected areas.

"We can't in any way accept this as a free and fair election," said Tissa Attanayake, general secretary of the opposition UNP.

There were also several incidents of violence.

In Kathankudi, four people from a family of opposition supporters were badly burned when a bottle of acid was thrown into their house, said Jamaldeen Farida, one of the injured.

A supporter of the ruling party coalition, S. Tarek, was attacked by opposition supporters outside a polling station in the town of Eravur, his brother-in-law Mustafa Nazir said.

Hospital workers said Tarek suffered a broken skull.

Even before the vote, Rodrigo said widespread intimidation and the ruling party's misuse of government resources made it impossible to hold a fair election.

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