Kabul:
Taliban militants determined to scuttle Afghanistan's parliamentary elections showered rockets on cities on Saturday as men and women voted in a key test of the government's ability to fight insurgents and entrenched corruption.
At least three civilians were killed and the Kandahar province Governor survived a bombing in the first nationwide balloting since fraud-marred presidential elections last year undermined international support for President Hamid Karzai.
The balloting measured the capacity of the government - with the help of 140,000 NATO troops - to ensure safe elections and tested the strength of militants who vowed to disrupt them.
Observers expect the vote to be far from perfect, but hope it will be accepted by the Afghan people as legitimate.
About 2,500 candidates were vying for 249 seats in Parliament. Polls officially closed at 16:00 local time (11:30 GMT) on Saturday.
Afghan security officials dismissed Saturday's attacks as "insignificant," and said they did not hamper voting, adding that 92 per cent of polling stations had opened.
However, there were some reports of voting irregularities and turnout nationwide appeared spotty at best, though the level of violence seemed lower than during last year's presidential poll, when more than 30 civilians and more than a dozen Afghan security forces were killed.
At one polling station in Kabul, Sayed Ali, an election observer, said he was concerned if people had been prevented from voting
"In short, I can say that if all over Afghanistan a number of people haven't been able to cast their votes, this will undermine the legitimacy of elections," he said.
But colleague Ahmad Jawad said he believed there had been no problems, at least at their polling station, saying "the process was very clear and fair. There wasn't any irregularity as I have been supervising here since this morning, so I am sure that there hasn't any irregularity up to now."
Electoral officials said they have no separate process for determining turnout ahead of the counting of the ballots.
The first partial tallies are expected early next week.
Full preliminary results are not expected until the end of the month and final results in late October.