Castillo claims win in tight Peru presidential poll

Left-wing union leader Pedro Castillo on Wednesday claimed victory in Peru's presidential election as he held on to a wafer-thin margin in the vote count over his conservative rival Keiko Fujimori.

Fujimori, the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, has claimed irregularities in the process, with "signs of fraud". She has suggested as many as 500,000 ballots cast in the runoff election on Sunday need to be recounted.

By Wednesday afternoon, Castillo had 50.2 percent of the vote compared with Fujimori's 49.8 percent, with 99.9 percent of the runoff ballots counted. Just 67,116 votes separated the presidential race's final two contenders out of the more than 17.4 million ballots registered.