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Balloting for Afghan presidential runoff concludes

Source: Xinhua | June 15, 2014, Sunday | Online Edition

THE polling for Afghanistan's presidential runoff election concluded on Saturday evening and counting of ballots has begun, the country's election officials said.

"The polling, which began 7 local time Saturday has ended at 4pm local time," an Independent Election Commission (IEC) commissioner, Sareer Ahmad Barmak, told local media.

The Afghan election officials said that the election was relatively peaceful despite some attacks and complaints.

They said that the IEC has taken note of allegations of fraud and all those allegations are being looked into.

The runoff election will decide whether former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah or ex-World Bank economist Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai leads the country into a new era with declining international military and civilian assistance.

The two entered a runoff after none of the eight candidates obtained an outright victory or more than half of the valid votes in the first round held on April 5.

The Taliban insurgent group fighting the government has vowed to disrupt the election process. They launched more than 150 attacks on polling centers on Saturday.

At least 10 people, including several security forces, were killed and nearly 100 others were wounded in Taliban attacks on Saturday, the Public Health Minister Dr. Suraya Dalil told local media.

According to the final results of the April 5 election, Abdullah secured 45 percent of some 7 million votes, and Ahmadzai won 31.6 percent.

Afghans began voting earlier on Saturday to elect a new president for the next five years in the first transfer of power through polling in the country's history.

There are more than 12 million eligible voters, 35 percent of them women. The number of turnout for Saturday's polls remained unknown so far. There were 6,365 polling centers and 23,136 stations for the voting.

The preliminary results of the runoff will be clear on July 2 while the final result of the polls will be announced on July 22.

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