(Corrects wording of quote in paragraph 13, edits paragraph 1)
By Hereward Holland
KIGALI (Reuters) - Incumbent Paul Kagame won 93 percent of the votes in a presidential election, final results showed on Wednesday, after a campaign that critics said was marred by government repression.
A grenade was thrown into a rush-hour crowd in the capital Kigali, wounding at least seven people. Analysts said the attack appeared to be aimed at producing a political crisis.
Kagame, widely lauded for rebuilding Rwanda and establishing peace in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, won the last election in 2003 by a similar margin. Wednesday's results still have to be signed off by the Supreme Court.
"We are very happy with the conduct of the electoral process, from the campaign to the voting itself. We did not get reports of intimidation from anywhere," said Charles Munyaneza, executive secretary of the electoral body.
Turnout for Monday's election was more than 95 percent in all the nation's five provinces.
Kagame's nearest rival, Jean Damascene Ntawukuliryayo of the Social Democratic Party, won 5 percent. Prosper Higiro of the Liberal Party garnered just over 1 percent and Alvera Mukabaramba of the Party for Peace and Concord 0.4 percent.
Opponents said the other candidates were a democratic smokescreen and stooges of Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). They also said the campaign playing field had been uneven, with three would-be opposition candidates prevented from registering to contest the ballot.
One of them, Victoire Ingabire, head of the United Democratic Forces party who faces charges of funding rebels in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo and espousing genocide ideology, rejected the result.
GRENADE ATTACK
Police spokesman Eric Kayiranga said seven people including two children were wounded in a grenade blast outside a Kigali bus park on Wednesday evening.
"It was thrown into the middle of a crowd. It was rush hour and people were going home. Three suspects were arrested on the spot," he told Reuters.
Security agents quickly sealed off the area, denying access to journalists. Eyewitnesses put the number of wounded at closer to 20 and said bloodstains were visible on the roadside.
"Grenade attacks are never an attempt to overthrow the government but rather to influence the political climate. At most they could provoke the RPF to clamp down on civil liberties and thereby create a political crisis," said Rwanda expert Jason Stearns.
Another regional analyst who cannot be identified said: "It does show that opposition to Kagame is unlikely to come via the ballot box."
Human rights groups pointed to mounting violence during the run-up to the election after the shooting dead of a local journalist and the killing of an opposition official who was found nearly beheaded in July. The government strenuously denied any involvement.
"It was a climate of intimidation and exclusion of the opposition and critical voices. It was a climate of fear," Carina Tertsakian, Rwanda researcher for Human Rights Watch, told Reuters by telephone from London.
The European Union congratulated Rwanda for the calm atmosphere on polling day and high voter turnout and said the election marked a new stage in Rwanda's democratic process and development.
But it said it was concerned by the pre-election incidents and called for swift and transparent investigations.
Kagame has been in control of the land-locked nation of 10 million people since his rebel army swept to power in the aftermath of the genocide of 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994.
Despite being poor in natural resources, Rwanda is a rising star in Africa for donors and investors with Kagame feted as a visionary leader and African icon. The International Monetary Fund forecasts its economy will expand by an average of 6 percent in the medium term.
(Additional reporting by David Kezio-Musoke; writing by Richard Lough; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
