Millions of Afghans have voted for their first parliament in more than 30 years, streaming to polling stations in mosques and schools and defying last-ditch attempts by Taliban rebels to derail the vote.
Violence marred the start of polling, with nine people killed including a French soldier, while rockets were fired on a UN warehouse in Kabul and two would-be suicide bombers were wounded as they tried to attack a voting centre.
But as the polls closed, officials said a high proportion of the nearly 12.5 million eligible voters had cast their ballots, signalling another step on a difficult path to democracy launched after the Taliban regime fell in 2001.
The vote for the lower house of parliament and 34 provincial councils came less than a year after Afghanistan's first presidential poll, won by US-backed leader, Hamid Karzai.
Voting was held at over 6,000 polling stations from the deserts of the south to the Hindu Kush mountains of the northeast, in one of the most difficult logistical operations ever undertaken by international electoral workers.
A huge security operation was mounted to protect voters involving 100,000 troops, after more than 1,000 people died in violence in the months before the election.
Full results are not expected until late October.
