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Violence rocks chaotic Afghan elections

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KABUL: More than 130 Afghans were killed or wounded in poll-related violence on Saturday, officials said, as the legislative election turned chaotic with hundreds of polling centres failing to open and voters queueing for hours.


Most of the casualties were in Kabul, where at least four people were killed and 78 wounded in multiple explosions, acting health ministry spokesman Mohibullah Zeer said, after the Taliban warned voters to boycott the ballot “to protect their lives”.


Election organisers, who have been skewered over their shambolic preparations for the long-delayed ballot, extended voting until Sunday for 360 polling centres after hiccups with voter registration lists and biometric verification devices caused lengthy delays.


At least three people were killed and more than 30 wounded in multiple explosions across Kabul, acting health ministry spokesman Mohibullah Zeer said. The Italian NGO Emergency said 37 people had been taken to its trauma hospital in Kabul, including a dead child.


An Independent Election Commission (IEC) employee was killed and seven others were missing after the Taliban attacked a polling centre in the northern province of Kunduz, destroying ballot boxes, provincial IEC director Mohammad Rasoul Omar said.


Three rockets also struck the Kunduz provincial capital, but there were no casualties.


The Taliban claimed it carried out 166 attacks on voting locations, checkpoints and military sites on Saturday morning.


Despite the threat of violence, large numbers of voters showed up at polling centres in major cities where they waited hours for them to open.


Most polling sites opened late after teachers employed to handle the voting process failed to show up on time, said the IEC, which promised to extend voting by four hours.


University student Mohammad Alem said he felt “frustrated” after spending more than three hours trying to vote in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, only to discover his name was not on the registration list.


“There also were some problems with the biometric devices because they were already running out of charge,” he said.


After waiting four hours at a polling centre, Tabish Forugh tweeted he had not seen “even remotely similar... chaos” at previous elections.


Almost nine million people registered to vote in the parliamentary election, which is more than three years late. But attacks across the country on Saturday are likely to deter many from turning up at the nearly 5,000 polling centres.


Hundreds of people were killed or wounded in the months leading up to the poll. The killing of a powerful police chief in the southern province of Kandahar on Thursday further eroded confidence in the ability of security forces to protect voters.


Voting in Kandahar has been delayed by a week following the attack.


As well as Kunduz, there was a rocket attack near a polling station in the western province of Herat that a police spokesman said wounded a child.  — AFP


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