Afghans cast their ballots, scattered attacks across the country

Voters go to the polls in Afghanistan on Saturday despite threats from the Taliban to disrupt the vote. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has urged people to ignore the Taliban, although there have been scattered attacks across the country killing six people. In the second parliamentary election since the Taliban were toppled in 2001, 2,500 candidates are contesting 249 seats.

(Photo: Reuters/Ahmad Masood)

Four people were killed in rocket attacks near polling stations, according to officials. Three died in eastern Kunar province, one man died in a mortar attack in northern Takhar province and an earlier rocket attack killed two people in Nangarhar province.

Toryalai Wesa, Kandahar’s provincial governor, said he survived a roadside bomb attack whilst visiting polling stations in the region.

“The blast caused no casualties but it shattered my vehicle’s windows,” he told the AFP news agency. “I’m all right, I’m not hurt.”

In Kabul a rocket landed outside Afghanistan’s state-owned television station early on Saturday morning, according to police. The building is close to the presidential palace and Nato headquarters.

Despite attacks Karzai said people should elect candidates "free from pressure and without the force of money". As he cast his ballot at a school inside the presidential compound he said he voted for "the construction of my country".

Turnout has so far been slow, Kandahar’s polling centres were said to be quiet. In Kabul there were around 300 men and 40 women in queues at a polling station in the south of the city a few hours after polls opened. About 50 people were said to waiting outside one polling station in the Tajik neighbourhood of the capital, an area dominated by Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group.

The Taliban have urged voters to boycott the polls. A number of election workers, campaign workers and an election candidate were kidnapped on Friday. Afghan authorities have said 63,000 soldiers and 52,000 police have been deployed to try and prevent violence, with nearly 150,000 foreign troops on standby.

The vote is seen as a test of Karzai’s credibility.

"In one sense not terribly significant because the Afghan parliament is a much overlooked body with limited powers that has really failed in the years that it’s been in existence to hold the government of Hamid Karzai to account," Kabul correspondent Jon Boone told RFI.

"However it’s significant in the sense that this will be a marker of progress, or perhaps the country going backwards if this election does turn out to be the sort of fiasco that we saw last year during the presidential election," he added.

Election officials said 92 per cent of the country's polling stations had opened. Fazil Ahmad Manawi, head of the Independent Election Commission said there was no indication as to whether the other eight per cent had opened or not.

Polling stations in 34 provinces will stay open until 16:00 local time (11:30 GMT). About 15 million Afghans are eligible to vote.