After Iraqi elections unprecedented historical free elections in Afghanistan..
Millions of Afghans voted Sunday, as polling ends for their first parliament in more than 30 years.
Violence marred the start of polling, with nine people killed including a French soldier, while rockets were fired on a UN warehouse in Kabul and two would-be suicide bombers were wounded as they tried to attack a voting centre.
But as the polls closed officials said a high proportion of the nearly 12.5 million eligible voters had cast their ballots, signaling another step on a path to democracy launched after the Taliban regime fell in 2001.
"The voting started relatively slowly but after the morning it has seriously picked up all over Afghanistan," Peter Erben of the UN-Afghan Joint Electoral Management Board told reporters.
The vote for the lower house of parliament and 34 provincial councils comes less than a year after Afghanistan's first presidential poll, won by US-backed leader Hamid Karzai.
The 26,000 polling stations, scattered from the parched southern deserts to the northern slopes of the Hindu Kush mountains, started closing at 1130 GMT.
Officials said anyone who had started queuing before that time would be allowed to vote, after delays as Afghans struggled with the newspaper-sized ballots required to fit in the 5,800 candidates. Full results are not expected until late October.
Up for grabs in the elections were 249 seats in the lower house of the national assembly, including 68 for women, and 420 seats on provincial councils. |
