Two attacks in northern Afghanistan have injured two women and scared voters going to vote in the country’s first parliamentary elections since 2010, provincial officials said.
“At this moment, we have data about three explosions, there is no confirmed information about the dead or injured. However, they did not affect the desire of citizens to cast their votes,” said a police department official.
Voters were seen fleeing from a school in the north of the Afghan capital after a blast, according to AFP, with witnesses talking about several explosions at other polling centers.
An Italian NGO has reported of one baby dying and 29 people being injured. They were among those taken to their hospital after the explosion at a polling station.
People are reportedly continuing to cast their votes amid at least three security incidents around polling stations in Kabul.
The deployment of Afghan National Security Forces has been increased from 50,000 military personnel to 70,000 across the country to protect the country’s 21,000 polling stations, Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry stated.
According to AFP reports, elections in the two provinces of Kandahar and Ghazni have been postponed as well as in 11 of the country’s nearly 400 districts.
Before the vote, members of the radical Taliban* movement, which does not recognize Saturday’s election, threatened civilians and announced their intention of sabotaging the electoral process.
So far, none of the terrorist groups operating in the country has claimed responsibility for the explosions.
Afghans headed to the polls to elect members of the lower house of parliament for the first time since 2010. At least nine candidates have been killed since July 1.
This year, over 2,500 candidates are competing for 249 seats in the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of the bicameral National Assembly of Afghanistan, of which less than 10 percent (205 candidates) represent 26 political parties. The remaining candidates are running as independent candidates. The voting is being conducted in 32 of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan. In Ghazni province, the election is scheduled for Spring 2019, and in Kandahar province, it will be held next week due to a Taliban attack on the governor’s office.
The election was supposed to take place in 2016; however, it had been postponed because of the unstable security situation in the country.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
