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Afghans vote in parliamentary poll amid Taliban threats
Despite threats from the Taliban, who have vowed to disrupt the vote, people in Afghanistan were today voting in parliamentary elections.
Insurgents across the country have launched a relatively small number of rocket attacks across the country.
In one of these attacks, Kandahar governor Tooryalai Wesa survived an attack on his convoy.
He told journalists how his convoy had been struck by an explosion while he was visiting polling centres, but no one was injured.
More than 2,500 candidates were vying for 249 seats in the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of the Afghani Parliament.
Afghan soldiers and police were on alert, backed up by nearly 150,000 foreign troops.
The poll was the first since a fraud-marred presidential election last year, and came after months of pledges of reform.
Nearly 6,000 polling stations in 34 provinces would stay open until 4pm local time (1.30 pm Maltese time) About another 1,000 stations had not opened because of security fears.
Voting so far had been “slow”, and turnout appeared to have been “thin”.
The Taliban had warned voters to boycott the poll and "stick to jihad".
In what correspondents described as a thinly-veiled threat, the Taliban said it had "chalked out certain measures... to frustrate this American process and will implement them on the day when the illegitimate process of elections is conducted".
In Balkh province, three people were killed and four were injured in a rocket attack.
According to the police, a rocket fired in Kabul early this morning landed outside Afghanistan's state-owned television station, close to the presidential palace and the NATO headquarters.
Security officials were quoted as saying that two polling stations in Jalalabad had been attacked and security forces were involved in gun battles with militants in three areas of the city.
There had also been reports of concerns that the indelible ink used to mark the fingers of people who have voted, to help prevent fraud, could be washed off.
The Taliban had already claimed responsibility for kidnapping two parliamentary candidates and 18 poll officials and campaign workers in the run-up to the elections.
