Kabul:
Vote-counting in Afghanistan's parliamentary election was under way today after millions defied militant threats to cast their votes in the war-ravaged nation.
International allies praised Afghans for their courage amid fresh violence that saw 14 civilians killed during the second parliamentary vote since the 2001 US-led invasion ousted the Taliban.
But following UN and US warnings that security and fraud were concerns, complaints of irregularities emerged, with allegations of intimidation and ineligible voters.
Insurgents fired rockets in several cities and set off bombs at a polling station and beside a convoy carrying the governor of Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold in the south, but officials said several more attacks were foiled.
After polls closed yesterday, the United Nations and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) commended the Afghan people for upholding their right to vote in face of threats from the Taliban insurgency.
Stressing that it was not a final figure, Fazil Ahmad Manawi, the country's senior election official, said 3,642,444 votes had been cast at 4,632 polling centres, according to preliminary data.
"This makes 40 per cent of the maximum number of voters," he said. But the Electoral Complaints Commission said it had received complaints of delayed opening, intimidation, ineligible voters, misuse of registration cards, proxy voting, poor ink quality and shortages of ballot papers.
Among those who complained was the election monitoring group the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA), which said voting had been affected by insecurity, violence and irregularities including ballot stuffing.
"Taking these problems into account, FEFA has serious concerns about the quality of the elections," the monitoring group said, adding that it planned to produce more detailed reports on these problems.
FEFA said that counting of votes began soon after polls closed at 4:00 pm (1130 GMT) Saturday, but in haphazard fashion.
"While counting was under way shortly after the closing of polls in some areas, in others it was postponed until the next day," FEFA said, citing one of several irregularities it had noted in the election.
Preliminary results are expected on Wednesday, with final certified results due on October 31.
President Hamid Karzai -- whose own re-election last year was mired in massive fraud and recorded a turnout of 33 per cent -- had called on people to vote to take their country "forward to a better future".
International allies praised Afghans for their courage amid fresh violence that saw 14 civilians killed during the second parliamentary vote since the 2001 US-led invasion ousted the Taliban.
But following UN and US warnings that security and fraud were concerns, complaints of irregularities emerged, with allegations of intimidation and ineligible voters.
Insurgents fired rockets in several cities and set off bombs at a polling station and beside a convoy carrying the governor of Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold in the south, but officials said several more attacks were foiled.
After polls closed yesterday, the United Nations and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) commended the Afghan people for upholding their right to vote in face of threats from the Taliban insurgency.
Stressing that it was not a final figure, Fazil Ahmad Manawi, the country's senior election official, said 3,642,444 votes had been cast at 4,632 polling centres, according to preliminary data.
"This makes 40 per cent of the maximum number of voters," he said. But the Electoral Complaints Commission said it had received complaints of delayed opening, intimidation, ineligible voters, misuse of registration cards, proxy voting, poor ink quality and shortages of ballot papers.
Among those who complained was the election monitoring group the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA), which said voting had been affected by insecurity, violence and irregularities including ballot stuffing.
"Taking these problems into account, FEFA has serious concerns about the quality of the elections," the monitoring group said, adding that it planned to produce more detailed reports on these problems.
FEFA said that counting of votes began soon after polls closed at 4:00 pm (1130 GMT) Saturday, but in haphazard fashion.
"While counting was under way shortly after the closing of polls in some areas, in others it was postponed until the next day," FEFA said, citing one of several irregularities it had noted in the election.
Preliminary results are expected on Wednesday, with final certified results due on October 31.
President Hamid Karzai -- whose own re-election last year was mired in massive fraud and recorded a turnout of 33 per cent -- had called on people to vote to take their country "forward to a better future".
Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world
