A suicide bomber blew himself up in the Afghan capital on Saturday, killing at least 15 people as voting concluded in parliamentary elections overshadowed by the threat of violence and long delays at polling stations. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, which appeared to have been the most serious of a day marked by a series of smaller-scale attacks that caused dozens of casualties across the country.<\/p>\n
Voting should have been concluded by the time the suicide bomber struck a polling station in the north of Kabul, killing 10 civilians and five police, but polling stations were kept open longer than normal to cope with large numbers of people who had been unable to cast ballots.<\/p>\n
Turnout was higher than expected, with long lines forming outside polling centres in the main cities, but many voters were forced to endure extended waits because of technical and organisational problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople\u2019s enthusiasm and participation despite threats, intimidation and attacks by militants must be lauded today,\u201d said one senior international security official, who added: \u201cThe electioneering process will require close scrutiny as it is clear that there were multiple failures.\u201d<\/p>\n
Untested biometric voter-registration equipment, rushed in at the last minute to counter voter fraud, caused particular problems. The Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan, a civil action group, said the devices suffered malfunctions in more than 40 percent of polling centres.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest problem is with the biometric machines, there are some sites where they\u2019re not working and a lot of voters have been discouraged and have gone home,\u201d said Nasibullah Sayedi, a voter in the western city of Herat.<\/p>\n
The Independent Election Commission, the body overseeing the ballot, said voting hours would be extended in some centres to cope with demand and some polling stations, which had not opened at all, would be open on Sunday.<\/p>\n
In the days leading to the vote, Taliban militants issued a series of statements telling people not to take part in what they consider a foreign-imposed process and warning election centres may be attacked.<\/p>\n
Security officials said there were more than 120 hand grenade or improvised explosives attacks but they said many of these did not target voting centres but were aimed nearby, apparently with the aim of frightening voters away rather than causing casualties.<\/p>\n
Afghanistan\u2019s political scene is still tainted by the aftermath of a disputed presidential vote in 2014 that forced the two main rival groupings to form an unstable partnership. Both sides were accused of massive electoral cheating.<\/p>\n
But high turnout, at least in the major cities, reflected strong support for the process in the face of threats from militant attacks and widespread disillusion with a corrupt political class.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want candidates to serve the country and hear the voices of the disabled and the poor,\u201d said Abdullah, a wheelchair-bound voter in Herat. \u201cPeople ask what difference one person\u2019s vote will make but I say, if a million disabled people come out to vote, don\u2019t you think that will make a difference?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A suicide bomber blew himself up in the Afghan capital on Saturday, killing at least 15 people as voting concluded in parliamentary elections overshadowed by the threat of violence and long delays at polling stations. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, which appeared to have been the most serious of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44997,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44996"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44998,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44996\/revisions\/44998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}