You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

Afghanistan: 27 Killed, 100 Injured as Voters Head to Polls

HeadlineOct 22, 2018

In Afghanistan, voters turned out in large numbers to vote in the country’s parliamentary elections over the weekend amid violence and deadly attacks. An Afghan official said that 27 people were killed and 100 wounded across the country on Election Day, including at least 18 people killed by a suicide bomber Saturday as they waited to cast ballots.

This comes days after the Taliban claimed responsibility for an attack that killed top Afghan General Abdul Raziq in the southern province of Kandahar, prompting a week’s delay for voting in the region. The Pentagon said Sunday U.S. Army General Jeffrey Smiley was shot and wounded in that attack. The top U.S. general in Afghanistan, Scott Miller, was also a target of the attack but survived uninjured. The elections, which were postponed three times due to security concerns, saw a record number of women and young people running for the 250 parliamentary seats. Preliminary results are expected in November.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top