Iran Press/Asia: Polling centres in cities and villages opened at 7:00 a.m. local time (0230 GMT) and continued till 5:00 pm local time (1230 GMT) in the country's 34 provinces, election commission officials were quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.
The voting process initially was to end at 3:00 pm local time but extended for two more hours to enable the voters to use their franchise, head of the election commission Hawa Alam Nuristani told reporters.
According to security officials, there were attacks or other incidents in 13 provinces, including Kabul, and nine people were killed and more than 100 were wounded. Most incidents involved rockets being fired at polling centres.
There were complaints about technical issues, pockets of violence and some irregularities that marred the process, such as registered voters not finding their names on voting lists. Nonetheless, the independent election commission (IEC) chief Hawa Alam Nuristani told TOLOnews on Saturday evening that despite security and technical problems, “we had a good election.”
It is the fourth presidential election in Afghanistan since 2001 when the Taliban regime was ousted from power.
Over 9.4 million eligible voters, 35 percent of them women, registered to cast their votes in Saturday's polling. Fourteen out of the 18 registered contenders are vying for the presidency with a five-year term and among the candidates are sitting President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani and government Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah. Four candidates have withdrawn from the race in favour of one candidate.
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