Afghan women line up to vote at a local mosque used as a polling station August 20, 2009 in Kabul, Afghanistan. Afghans voted Thursday to elect a president for the second time in history with election officials stating that turnout was healthy despite sporadic violence by the Taliban. The incumbent President Karzai is considered to be the frontrunner despite claims of corruption and what many consider an ineffectual government.
As electoral officials prepared to close the voting booths, reports of violence remained sporadic but there appeared to be a low turn out, with many saying they were too disillusioned or too frightened - especially by a Taliban threat to cut off voters' index fingers, which are marked with indelible ink.
Kabul, the capital, was quiet but tense with shops and businesses closed and thousands of extra police manning checkpoints around the city, and searching the few cars and pedestrians moving around.
President Hamid Karzai – who is favourite to win the election but may be forced into a second round run-off - cast his vote in a boys' high school near his heavily fortified palace. "I request my dear countrymen to come out and cast their vote to decide their future," he said, adding that he was not worried about violence.
The most significant attack came in northern Baghlan province where militants stormed the town, killing the Baghlan police chief and sparking heavy clashes with security forces. Reports indicated that between six and 22 Taliban insurgents were killed but it is not clear whether polling had restarted before the scheduled end of voting.
The head of the country’s Independent Election Commission said officials had been told to find cover but they would reopen the ballot as soon as possible. “We had to tell our people to save your [ballot] boxes and save yourselves,” Azizullah Lodin said.
In the southern city of Kandahar, a mortar attack hit the house of the Provincial Governor, Tooryalai Wesa, at around 3.30am and two rockets hit the city at about 6.30 am, according to local security monitors.
“Yes, rockets have landed," Mr Wesa told reporters after casting his vote. Witnesses reported hearing two blasts, and local security sources said four people were injured.
Skirmishes were also reported across Kandahar, where streets were largely deserted, and several improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were found and destroyed outside polling stations, the security monitors said.
More explosions were heard later, and one Taliban commander told Afghan media by telephone: "The situation will get worse. We are trying our best."
The Taliban also fired rockets and attacked one polling station in the northern city of Kunduz, the local police chief, Abdul Razaq told reporters. He said no civilians were hurt, but police killed one militant and arrested two others. 
U.S. Marine Sgt. Raymond Shinahra, right, of Guam, and Navy Corpsman Michael Cannova, both attached to Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Regiment, 2nd MEB, 3rd MEF, carry a box full of presidential ballots delivered by Marine helicopters from election headquarters in Lashkar Gah to election officials in Dahaneh Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009, in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. Officials in the village had discovered early in the morning that they were lacking any presidential ballots and could not open the voting process without them.
The Taleban warned yesterday that 20 of its suicide bombers had infiltrated Kabul, and other militants were blocking roads across the country to stop people from voting.
There were no signs of such activity today, but many of the country's 15 million registered voters appeared to be staying away from the roughly 6,500 polling stations during early voting.
Tim Fairbank, an election observer with US-based Democracy International, said he had visited four polling stations in the eastern city of Jalalabad, but only a few hundred people had voted there.
"The polls opened a bit late, but voter turnout seems to be quite low," he said.
"A lot of people have told us they were afraid to vote, and afraid to have their fingers dipped in ink because of the Taliban's threats."
He said local turnout was expected to be no more than 20-30 per cent, but the government was expected to claim it was more like 60 per cent in the area, which voted overwhelmingly for Mr Karzai at the last presidential election in 2004.
Mr Karzai, who came to power after US-led forces toppled the Taliban government in 2001, is widely expected to win the second presidential election in Afghanistan’s history despite international disillusion with his government.
But he faces an unexpectedly strong challenge from Dr Abdullah Abdullah, his former Foreign Minister, and is expected to fall short of the outright majority needed to secure a victory in the first round.
Analysts say Mr Karzai’s support could be depressed by low voter turnout in the unstable south, which is dominated by the ethnic Pashtun majority that rallied behind him in 2004. Turn-out appeared higher in northern areas where Mr Abdullah is expected to do well.
Many expect Mr Karzai’s own allies to try to compensate for that by stuffing ballot boxes in areas where there are few voters and no election monitors.
US and British officials say there may be some violence and electoral fraud, but not enough to invalidate the vote and undermine their efforts to defeat the Taliban.
About 300,000 Afghan and foreign troops are being deployed for today’s vote, although international forces are keeping away from polling stations to avoid becoming a magnet for Taliban attacks.
The Ministry of Defence announced today that a Chinook helicopter had been forced into an emergency landing in Helmand province last night after a possible Taliban attack. The British crew survived unharmed.
The Afghan government has been trying to negotiate truces with local Taliban commanders who may be reluctant to cause civilian casualties in their own neighbourhoods.
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