DR Congo on Wednesday said it had pulled accreditation for a French radio journalist and cut off the station's broadcasts amid tensions over the counting of votes in crucial elections. The authorities said accreditation for the Radio France Internationale (RFI) correspondent in Kinshasa, Florence Morice, had been withdrawn.

Government spokesman Lambert Mende accused Morice of violating electoral law and "the code of good conduct for foreign journalists covering the elections".

Accusing the station of stirring controversy, he said, "RFI's broadcasts have been cut off in all of Congo's cities."

"We are not going to let a radio station throw petrol on the flames at a time when we are waiting for the compilation of the provisional results," Mende said.

RFI, a French public-service broadcaster, has a very large audience in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a French-speaking country of around 80 million people.

It has been closely covering Sunday's presidential elections and the marathon vote tally. RFI issued a statement saying its coverage had been impartial and expressing full support for Morice.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019