KABUL, Sept 17: Eleven people were killed in clashes ahead of Sunday’s Afghan elections and insurgents were caught trying to blow up a dam, but UN organizers said the polls were set to open countrywide in spite of Taliban threats.

Enthusiasm among Afghans to vote in their first free legislative elections in more than 30 years has been high and the commander of US forces in the country predicted a record turnout of the 12.5 million registered to vote.

Lieutenant-General Karl Eikenberry said Taliban insurgents would not hesitate to attack election workers or voters to try to disrupt the ballot for a national assembly and councils in the country’s 34 provinces, but they would not succeed.

“Tomorrow that election is going to go (ahead). There will be some violence, but it’s going to go,” he told Reuters in an interview.

The $159 million UN-run vote comes nearly a year after US-backed Hamid Karzai won a presidential election the Taliban vowed but failed to disrupt. More than eight million voted then.

A high turnout will be a boost for the US administration, allowing it to portray Afghanistan as a success to set against the gloom from Iraq and Hurricane Katrina in the United States.

But analysts have questioned whether parliament will be more of a help or a hindrance to Mr Karzai’s still fragile government.

The election, contested on non-party lines, is expected to produce a fragmented assembly focusing on local not national interests. Mr Karzai himself has not been involved in campaigning but an opposition bloc has vowed to challenge his government.

Mr Karzai, in a televised address on Saturday evening, urged people to vote freely.

“Your full participation in the election ... is a positive step towards a bright and prosperous future,” he said.

The top UN official in the country said the elections signalled the emergence of a new political culture and showed that war-weary Afghanistan could resist the rule of the gun.

Mr Jean Arnault, the UN secretary-general’s special representative, condemned a wave of violence — in which seven candidates and six poll workers have died as well as many members of the security forces — but he told a news conference the militants had failed to disrupt preparations.

“We are very confident that those extremists will also fail to disrupt and derail polling day tomorrow,” he said.

The Taliban have called on Afghans to boycott the elections and said they could be caught up in attacks on foreign troops.

Overnight attacks underlined the threat.

Guerillas ambushed a police patrol south of Kabul killing four and wounding two, while seven guerillas were killed after they ambushed a police convoy in Zabul, a southern hotbed of militant activity, police said.

Twenty insurgents were arrested in the south while trying to blow up the country’s biggest dam, police said. —Reuters