KABUL: Taleban fighters will not wreck Afghanistan’s presidential election, President Hamid Karzai said hours before polls open, after fighters clashed with police in the center of Kabul and threatened to shut the country’s roads.
“I hope that tomorrow our countrymen, millions of them will come and vote for country’s stability, for the country’s peace, for the country’s progress,” Karzai said late on Wednesday after a small ceremony for the country’s Independence Day holiday. “Enemies will do their best, but it won’t help.”
Earlier on Wednesday, gunmen stormed a bank building in central Kabul and battled police for hours in what the Taleban said was one of many attacks it had planned for the capital.
In southern Kandahar province two election workers were killed in a bomb blast, an election official said.
Fearing more election-related violence, officials in Kandahar city said they would close roads to normal traffic for Thursday’s poll, allowing only election workers and observers, vehicles transporting voters, and the media to travel freely.
In a statement on a Taleban website (www.alemara.org) the group said 20 suicide bombers had infiltrated the capital, preparing attacks to thwart the election.
