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Tuesday, September 08, 2009 KABUL: Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission said Tuesday it had found "clear and convincing evidence" of fraud in the country's controversial elections and had ordered some ballots recounted.

Sunday, August 30, 2009 KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday inched closer to the prospect of outright victory in elections marred by allegations of massive fraud and international concerns about their credibility. Officials have now announced results from 35 percent of polling stations in the second ever direct presidential vote in a country dogged by a Taliban insurgency, eight years after the US-led invasion. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, on a lightning visit to the troubled south, pledged to speed up training Afghan security forces in order to battle the insurgency and eventually draw down international troops. As Brown visited Helmand province, an explosion killed a British soldier who was on foot patrol in the province, raising to 208 the number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion, British officials said. Out of 2.03 million valid votes counted, Karzai won 940,558 and former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah 638,924, Daud Ali Naja...

KANDAHAR: A Taliban spokesman denied any responsibility Wednesday for a major bombing that killed dozens of people in southern Afghanistan's largest city, saying that the militant group condemns the attack.The explosion ripped through a central area of Kandahar city just after nightfall, killing at least 43 people and wounding 65, according to the Interior Ministry. It flattened buildings and sent flames shooting into the sky on the same day that the first preliminary results were released from last week's landmark presidential vote.Rescue workers were still pulling out injured people on Wednesday."There are some people still trapped in the buildings and we are trying to get them out," Mohammad Darwish, one of the rescue workers.The thundering blast occurred in a district that includes U.N. facilities and an Afghan intelligence office.Kandahar is the spiritual home of the Taliban and the city was hit by rockets on the morning of election day as Taliban militants made...

Tuesday, August 25, 2009 KANDAHAR: The death toll from a massive explosion in Afghanistan's southern city of Kanadahar late Tuesday has risen to 36 with another 64 people wounded, a top police official said. "So far we have 36 killed and 64 wounded and they are all civilians," said General Ghulam Ali Wahdad, police commander for southern Afghanistan. "At this stage we cannot break down the casualties in terms of how many women, children and men. Police are still busy trying to find bodies from under the rubble," he added. The interior ministry in Kabul said that dozens of people were killed and wounded when explosives ripped through a vehicle. A spokesman put the death toll at more than 10 and the number of wounded at more than 50. A local police official earlier put the death toll at 10 following what one police official called a suicide car bomb.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009 KANDAHAR: Eight people were killed and 13 others wounded when an explosion ripped through Afghanistan's troubled city of Kandahar, a hospital doctor said. "We have received eight dead bodies and 13 wounded from the blast this evening and they all seem to be civilians," Doctor Asmatullah, who like many Afghans has only one name, said at the main hospital in the city. A senior police official said the blast was caused by a suicide car bomb.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009 KABUL: Incumbent Hamid Karzai narrowly led the race for the Afghan presidency with just two percent more votes than his closest rival, the election commission announced Tuesday in the first partial results. The partial results amount to about 10 percent of the total ballots cast in Afghanistan's only second direct presidential election, which was held last Thursday and has been overshadowed by claims of massive fraud. "From the total 524,444 valid votes, Hamid Karzai has got 212,927 and Abdullah Abdullah has 202,889 votes," a spokesman for the Independent Election Commission (IEC) told a news conference. Those results handed Karzai 40.6 percent of the initial votes announced and Abdullah 38.6 percent. Ramazan Bashardost, a popular Afghan lawmaker who camps out in a tent near parliament and campaigned against corruption, got 53,740 votes and former World Bank economist Ashraf Ghani 15,143 votes, the commission announced. "I repeat again, this...