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Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail More Yahoo! Services Account Options New User? Sign Up Sign In Help Yahoo! Search web search Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Africa Europe Latin America Middle East North America Afghans vote for parliament amid threats, attacks By AMIR SHAH and RAHIM FAIEZ,Associated Press Writers - Saturday, September 18 Send IM Story Print KABUL, Afghanistan – Taliban rocket strikes and bombings kept some Afghans away from the polls Saturday but others braved threats to cast ballots in parliamentary elections being closely watched as a measure of the government's ability to fight against insurgents as well as entrenched corruption. At least two people were killed and the governor of Kandahar province survived an attempted car bombing, officials said. The poll _ the first since a fraud-marred presidential election last year _ is a test of the Afghan government's ability to conduct a safe and fair vote after months of pledges of reform. The number of attacks and the willingness of people to turn out at the polls will also be a measure of the strength of the insurgents, who vowed to disrupt the vote. Rockets struck major cities throughout the country _ the first one slamming into the capital before dawn, followed by strikes in a number of eastern cities, plus cities in Kandahar and Nimroz provinces. A rocket in northern Baghlan province killed two civilians, police spokesman Kamen Khan said. About 2,500 candidates are vying for 249 seats in the parliament. Observers have said they expect the vote in a country where many areas are under threat from insurgents to be far from perfect, but hopefully accepted by the Afghan people as legitimate. In Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold in the south, voters ventured out of their homes and headed to the polls in small groups, despite the rocket attack and several blasts across Kandahar city. One of the bombs targeted the convoy of Gov. Tooryalai Wesa as it was driving between voting centers but no one was injured, said police officer Abdul Manan. Wesa still urged Kandaharis to come out and vote. "The situation is under control," he said. "There's nothing to be afraid of. The enemy wants the election to fail, so if you want the insurgents out of your land, you'll have to come out and vote." West of Kandahar city, there were lines of voters in Zhari district, where Taliban leader Mullah Omar's radical Islamic movement was born 16 years ago. Hundreds of Afghan and international troops were securing the area. "People are fed up with the Taliban, that's why they're coming out more and more, so they can get rid of the Taliban," said Saleh Naeem, a businessman. "Because of the Taliban, business is in a bad condition in Zhari." The Taliban had warned ahead of the elections that those who cast ballots and those working the polls would be attacked. In Nangarhar's troubled Surkh Rud district, the Taliban prevented two voting centers from opening until late morning, when NATO and Afghan forces routed the insurgents. In the north, insurgents on motorbikes attacked a polling center in the Sayyad district of Sar-e-Pul province. Ten Afghan police trainees who were guarding the center ran off when the insurgents attacked, but election workers managed to escape, provincial police chief Gen. Bulal Neram said. He said the insurgents broke windows and ballot boxes and left with some election materials. Youqob Khan, deputy police chief in Khost, said at least one person was wounded when a bomb planted under a pile of wood exploded in a school yard next to a polling center in the provincial capital. Voting resumed after about an hour. Despite the violence and threats, there were Afghans who were determined to cast their ballots. At a mosque in eastern Kabul, a former schoolteacher said she had traveled from her home on the outskirts of the city the night before because voting was safer in the center city. "Even though I heard about those rocket attacks, I wanted to vote," said Aziza, 48, who gave only her first name. "Today is a historic day for Afghan people and it is very important for the restoration of democracy." Afghan security officials dismissed the attacks thus far as "insignificant," and insisted they had not hampered voting. "Election stations are open," said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary. "We have high numbers of stations for voting in several provinces." But turnout nationwide appeared spotty at best. In one neighborhood of western Kabul, all the voting centers were packed from early morning, with a few lines a hundred people deep. In most of the city, however, people came through in handfuls to nearly empty voting centers. In eastern Ghazni province, a series of rockets fired into the capital and surrounding areas scared many voters, who decided against venturing out to vote. Sayed Ismail Jahangir, spokesman for the governor, said people began to arrive at polling centers in late morning. In Jalalabad, some people at busy polling stations said candidates had provided buses to take them to the polls. President Hamid Karzai cast his vote at a high school in the capital. He said he hoped voters would not be deterred by the attacks. The elections will "take the country many steps forward to a better future," Karzai said. Last year's presidential election was similarly seen as a chance for the government to move forward to a more democratic future, then complaints of ballot-box stuffing _ much of it for Karzai's benefit _ and misconduct mounted. Though Karzai still emerged the victor, the drawn-out process and his reluctance to acknowledge corruption led many of his international backers to question their commitment to Afghanistan. There are about 140,000 NATO troops in the country, and the international community has spent billions trying to shore up the Karzai administration in the face of a strengthening insurgency. Questions about fraud-prevention measures arose within a few hours of the polls opening Saturday. Mohammad Hawaid, representative of a candidate at one polling station, complained that the ink applied to voters' fingers to prevent them from casting their ballots multiple times was not working. "It can be wiped off," Hawaid said. "This is a major irregularity." The ink is supposed to last at least 72 hours and be resistant to bleach. In Jalalabad, observers said poll workers were letting people vote with faked registration cards. "The women coming here have so many cards that don't have the stamp and are not real cards but still they are voting," said Nazreen, a monitor for the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, which has dispatched observers throughout the country. Fake voter cards flooded into Afghanistan ahead of the balloting, but election officials had promised that poll workers were trained to spot them. In Paktia province in the east, security forces stopped a car and found 1,600 fake voter registration cards, said Rohullah Samon, a provincial spokesman. Initial reports indicated the cards were intended to pad the tally of a former Taliban member who was a candidate, he said. NATO'S senior civilian representative argued that some fraud was expected, and that it would not necessarily undermine the vote. "The real issue is the scale of that and does it affect the result. And does it affect the credibility of the election, not in our eyes but in the eyes of the Afghan people," Mark Sedwill said. At least 24 people were killed in election-related violence preceding the vote, including four candidates, according to observers. In the past two days, Taliban militants abducted 18 election workers from a house in northern Bagdhis province, and a candidate was kidnapped in eastern Laghman province. NATO said Saturday that coalition forces have conducted 12 operations in seven Afghan provinces in the past week against insurgents planning to disrupt the elections. Three insurgents were killed and several captured, the military alliance said. ___ Associated Press writers Kathy Gannon in Jalalabad, Mirwais Khan in Kandahar and Heidi Vogt, Deb Riechmann, Dusan Stojanovic and Kimberly Dozier in Kabul contributed to this report. 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