KABUL: A suicide car bomb attack on a bus carrying police officers and workers in central Afghanistan killed at least six people and wounded dozens on Saturday, officials said.

The Taliban-claimed blast happened as the bus entered a police compound in the Wardak provincial capital of Maidan Shar, provincial pol­ice spokesman Hekmat­ullah Durrani said.

Six bodies and 31 wounded had been taken to hospitals in the city, health director Salim Asgharkhil said. Provincial governor spok­e­sman Abdul Rahman Man­gal confirmed the death toll.

In a WhatsApp message, Taliban spokesman Zabi­ul­lah Mujahid said “tens of Afghan police and soldiers were killed” in the attack.

Kandahar polls

Afghans risked their lives to vote in legislative elections in southern Afghan­istan on Saturday, after the Taliban-claimed killing of a powerful police chief delayed the ballot by a week.

Turbaned men and burqa-clad women stood in long, segregated queues outside polling centres in the deeply conservative Kandahar provincial capital, which was blanketed with heavy security in anticipation of militant attacks.

More than half a million people — the vast majority of them men — were registered to vote in Kandahar province where more than 100 candidates competed for 11 lower-house seats.

Organisers were under pressure to avoid last weekend’s debacle that forced the Independent Election Commission (IEC) to extend the nationwide ballot by a day.

Problems with untested biometric verification devices, missing or incomplete voter rolls and absent election workers following Taliban threats to attack the ballot forced Afghans to wait hours outside polling stations, many of which opened late or not at all.

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2018

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