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KABUL: Taliban ambushes, rocket attacks and blasts killed 26 civilians and security forces as Afghan voted on Thursday in elections that were declared a security success with less violence than expected.
A series of insurgent attacks killed nine civilians, nine policemen and eight soldiers, government ministers told a news conference in what Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said was a total of 135 incidents.
Amrullah Saleh, Afghanistan's spymaster, said security forces arrested militants in a series of sting operations to net those given time off from madrassas in Pakistan to come to disrupt the elections.
Among those detained was a previously unknown man he named only as Ayubi, who he claimed was a Taliban intelligence commander now based in Quetta.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, whose alliance has deployed 64,500 troops in Afghanistan to fight against the Taliban-led insurgency, hailed the election a "success" in security terms and said it had been well run.
Police said militants stormed an Afghan town on Thursday, launching a multi-pronged assault that sparked clashes and disrupted voting, but sporadic attacks elsewhere failed to disrupt the polls.
"Terrorists attacked from several directions. Fighting has been going on since morning," provincial police chief Mohammad Kabir Andarabi told AFP by telephone from Baghlan, a small town in the usually peaceful north.
"The enemy has been pushed back. We have killed 22 terrorists," he added.
Provincial governor Mohammad Akbar Barakzai later said 30 rebels were killed in fighting.
The head of the country's Independent Election Commission told a news conference in the capital Kabul that voting had been disrupted in the town.
"We had to tell our people to save your (ballot) boxes and save yourselves," Azizullah Lodin told reporters.
Separately, in a volatile district in the western province of Herat, Taliban militants stormed into three polling stations, set fire to the buildings and destroyed all votes cast, a district governor said.
The militants torched the polling stations as people were still casting their ballots, the governor added.
"They set ablaze the polling stations - the building, the ballot papers and all voting materials have been burnt," said Lal Mohammad Omarzai.
Elsewhere, two gunmen holed up in a building near a police station in Kabul opened fire, prompting a nearly two-hour standoff with security forces who took up positions surrounding the attackers, police told AFP.
The spy chief, Saleh said the pair wore suicide vests.
"Police used rocket-propelled grenades and the attackers were using hand grenades and machine guns," said a policeman at the site, where an AFP reporter saw police dragging out a body bag with two corpses inside.
The Taliban claimed the attack in a statement posted on their website.
"I was here waiting to vote. My wife and daughter were also here but we didn't leave until we cast our votes. I'm not scared of these terrorists," said foreign ministry employee Nasir Ahmad after the shootout.
The Taliban have struck repeatedly inside Kabul in a bloody countdown to the elections, which mark only the second time that war-weary Afghans have voted for a president in their history.
Taliban threats to derail the elections stoked fears about whether people would vote despite government reassurances it would be safe.
In the northern Kunduz province, Taliban were repelled from attacking a polling station and failed to cause any casualties or damage, police said.
In eastern Gardez city, two would-be suicide bombers were shot dead, defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said.
And in Kandahar, the capital of the 1996-2001 Taliban regime, at least four explosions rang out before polling stations opened and a woman was killed when a rocket slammed into a residential neighbourhood, a witness said.
Rockets and explosives caused fewer than a dozen casualties in Taliban strongholds in the south, eastern provinces Nangarhar, Kunar and Khost, as well as in the usually peaceful north, said witnesses and officials. - AFP/de
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