CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) – Anti-communist demonstrators stormed Moldova’s parliament yesterday, hurling computers through windows and torching furniture to protest elections they say were fraudulent.

Police fired water cannons but were unable to stop protesters from breaking into the parliament and an adjacent presidential office. Later, police tried unsuccessfully to use tear gas and firecrackers to hold back a second surge toward parliament by 2,000 protesters, but abandoned the effort.

Iuri Baziluc, a doctor at Chisinau Emergency Hospital, said 50 police officers and protesters were injured in the clashes, two days after the Communist Party won re-election in one of Europe’s poorest nations.

The violence started after at least 10,000 protesters gathered outside the parliament building, demanding new elections and shouting “Down with the Communists” and “Freedom, freedom”.

The crowd – primarily young people carrying European Union, Moldovan and Romanian flags – broke through police lines. A small number stormed the buildings.

An Associated Press reporter saw the protesters smash windows on two floors of the presidential office and set fire to furniture. Others broke into the parliament, burned furniture and hurled computers out the windows.

President Vladimir Voronin said on national television that the protest had been planned in advance, without saying by whom. He said “a true patriot cannot commit such acts of vandalism”.

In a statement read later on Moldovan TV by a journalist, Voronin called opposition parties “fascists (who) want to destroy democracy and independence in Moldova”. He said authorities would “decisively defend the democratic choice of the people”.

The Communists, in power since 2001, won about 50 per cent of the vote in what international observers said was a fair election.

But Chisinau Mayor Dorin Chirtoaca said many people voted more than once.

“The elections were fraudulent, there was multiple voting,” Chirtoaca, who is also the deputy leader of the opposition Liberal Party, said on Realitatea TV. “These are people who don’t know what democracy is.”

Opponents blame the Communists for low living standards and for preventing the former Soviet Republic from forming closer ties with the European Union. Moldova, with a population of 4.1 million, remains one of Europe’s poorest nations with an average monthly salary of $350.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had asked for everyone to refrain from violence, a spokeswoman said in New York. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana also called for calm and condemned violence on all sides, as did the head of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe office in Moldova.