NAIROBI, Oct. 10 (Xinhuanet) -- Six of the 26 candidates will vie for the second round of Somalia's presidential elections in Kenya's capital Nairobi on Sunday, after a first ballot failed to give any candidate the two-thirds majority required for outright victory, a Xinhua correspondent at the voting site said.

    Unofficial results show that Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, 71, leader of the autonomous Somali region of Puntland, gained 80 votes in the first round of the elections, leaving the other 25 contestantsfar behind.

    Somali lawmakers started voting for president of the Horn of Africa country on Sunday. The new president is expected to appointa prime minister to form a government, mandated to lead Somalia through a five-year transitional period.

    A total of 28 contestants including a woman were competing for the presidency in what is widely seen as the culmination of a tortuous two-year peace process in Kenya, mediated by the regionalInter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD).

    However, two presidential aspirants withdrew from the contest at the last minute, leaving 26 candidates to take an oath binding them to abide by whatever results from the voting.

    According to election organizers, in the likely event of no candidate obtaining more than two-thirds of the ballot, the top six runners will go to a second round. If none of them gains a two-thirds majority, the two leading candidates will face off in a third round, on a simple majority basis.

    Since the breakdown of the Somali central government in 1991, conflict and famine have killed hundreds of thousands of people, plunging the country into anarchy.

    Under the auspices of IGAD, which groups Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda and Somalia, Somali National Reconciliation Conference began in October 2002 in Kenya.

    The presidential elections come after the election of the speaker of the transitional federal parliament of Somalia on Sept.15 and his two deputies on Sept. 22 and the inauguration of the transitional parliament on Aug. 29. Enditem