KABUL (Reuters) - Parliamentary elections in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, due to be held on Saturday, will be delayed by one week following the assassination of the powerful provincial police commander, officials said on Friday.

Hafizullah Hashimi, spokesman of the Independent Election Commission, said the decision to delay the vote had been taken because the people of Kandahar were “morally not ready to vote” following the death of the commander, General Abdul Razeq, who was killed by a rogue bodyguard of another top official on Thursday. </s> Kabul, Afghanistan - Parliamentary election in Afghanistan's Kandahar province due to be held on Saturday, will be delayed by a week following the assassination of a powerful provincial police commander, according to the electoral body and the president's spokesman.

President Ashraf Ghani's spokesman Haroon Chakansuri told Al Jazeera the decision was made following demands from local people in the the province and recommendation from electoral officials.

The suspension of the polls comes following the assassination of Kandahar province's police chief General Abdul Raziq in an attack claimed by Taliban.

The southern province's intelligence chief, Abdul Mohmin, was also killed in the attack on Thursday.

Chakansuri said date for the poll will be announced later without giving further details.

Afghans will be voting on Saturday to elect members of parliament in polls delayed repeatedly for the past three years.

The interior ministry said they have put in place measures to ensure voting happens without incidents.

"The election is going according to plan. We have measures and we meet regularly. There will be no problem," Nasrat Rahimi, deputy spokesman for the interior ministry, told Al Jazeera.

"Over 70,000 security forces are there to maintain security. They are on high alert," Rahimi said. </s> Parliamentary elections in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, due to be held on October 20, will be delayed by one week following the assassination of the powerful provincial police commander, Haroon Chakhansori, a spokesman for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, has tweeted on his official account.

"In accordance with Article 104 of the Electoral Law, the Security Council accepted [the commission's proposal] and the [parliamentary] elections in Kandahar Province have been delayed only for one week," Independent Election Commission spokesman Hafizullah Hashimi told RFE/RL.

Hashimi said the decision to delay the vote had been made because the people of Kandahar Province were "morally not ready to vote" following the death of General Abdul Raziq, who was killed by a rogue bodyguard of another top official on October 17. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

"Unfortunately, Afghanistan lost its sons yesterday [in Kandahar] and it is possible that holding elections will create challenges in Kandahar. So, the Election Commission decided to propose the postponement of the election," commission member Wasima Badghisi told RFE/RL.

Raziq's killing was a major blow to the Western-backed government in Kabul.

The Taliban claimed responsibility in a statement, saying, "The brutal police chief of Kandahar has been killed along with several other officials."

Afghan officials told RFE/RL that a bodyguard opened fire after a high-level security meeting in the governor's compound.

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Scott Miller, was present at the gathering but was unhurt, NATO spokesman Grant Neely said.

Besides Raziq -- one of Afghanistan's most powerful commanders, with a fearsome reputation as an enemy of the Taliban -- the provincial intelligence head, Abdul Momin Hassankhail, was also killed.

An Afghan journalist working for state media also died in the attack, according to NAI, a group supporting open media in the country.

A close ally of the U.S. military, Raziq has been credited with pacifying large swaths of Kandahar but has been accused by human rights groups of gross human rights violations, including forcible disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial killings.

Around 14,000 U.S. troops are currently in Afghanistan, and Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Kone Faulkner told the Reuters news agency that the attack in Kandahar "will not change U.S. resolve in our South Asia strategy, if anything it makes us more resolute."

Afghanistan remains on high alert ahead of the long-delayed parliamentary elections on October 20, after the Taliban pledged to block the vote.

More than 2,500 candidates are competing for 249 seats in the lower house of parliament.

The run-up to the elections has been marred by deadly militant attacks and targeted killings of candidates, 10 of whom have been killed so far.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP </s> A suicide attack at a polling station outside Kabul killed at least 15 people on Saturday, with several others dying in scores of bombings, rocket attacks and incidents of violence across the country.

Over 170 people have reportedly been killed or wounded as voters went to around 21,000 polling stations.

Technical issues forced the closure of some of the stations, while voting hours were extended until Sunday in other areas.

Read more: Afghanistan violence raises uncertainty over elections, Kandahar vote delayed

How voting day was marred

At least 18 people were killed and 67 injured in blasts close to polling stations in several areas of the capital, Kabul.

In eastern Nangarhar province, an explosion left at least two people dead and three injured, and in northern Takhar province, at least one person was killed and eight others injured when a suspected Taliban rocket hit their home, said local leaders.

Rockets fired from the outskirts of northern Kunduz city struck near polling stations, injuring several people, dpa reported.

Several polling stations stayed shut due to technical issues, including missing biometric systems, and the non-arrival of voter registration lists, officials said.

Hours into polling, Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission said voting would be extended until 8 p.m. local time (1530 UTC) across much of the country. It said some polling stations, where election materials arrived late, would postpone voting until Sunday.

The provinces of Ghazni and Kandahar — the scene of Thursday's violent attack — postponed polling for a week.

Read more: The high price of Afghanistan's broken democracy

Anger at voting irregularities

Many of the people trained to use the biometric machines did not show up for work, as Taliban warned the voters to boycott the ballot "to protect their lives."

One election observer from Kabul province told DW: "Everything is a mess ... nothing is working. The systems they have put in place are not functioning."

Sami Mahdi, a parliamentary candidate in Kabul, accused the election commission of "mismanagement." He added: "Our observers have also witnessed cases of fraud but we will have to assess these reports."

Yosuf Rashid, from the election oversight organization Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan (FEFA), said it was too early to pass a judgment on the whole process. "I hope by the end of the day, the election commission learns from its mistakes and addresses these issues tomorrow."

Meanwhile, Aziz Ibrahimi, deputy spokesman for the Independent Election Commission, admitted to DW that there had been some irregularities: "The commission has decided to extend elections in centers which did not start work on time. But we do not know how many centers will remain open tomorrow."

Read more: Afghanistan election: Can young candidates turn things around?

mm, dj/jlw (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)

Each evening at 1830 UTC, DW's editors send out a selection of the day's hard news and quality feature journalism. You can sign up to receive it directly here. </s> Afghans are bracing for more deadly violence on Saturday as voters turn out for the long-delayed legislative election across the war-torn country that the Taliban has vowed to attack.

Some 54,000 security forces have been deployed to protect polling centres, which open at 7:00 am, but there are concerns the killing of a powerful police chief on Thursday will scare off many voters.

Voting has been delayed in the southern province of Kandahar after a Taliban-claimed attack on a US-Afghan security meeting that killed three people, including General Abdul Raziq.

General Scott Miller, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, escaped injury in the shooting, but 13 others were wounded.

Almost nine million people have registered to vote in the parliamentary election, which is more than three years late and only the third since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

But the threat of militant attacks and expectations for massive fraud are expected to deter many voters from showing up at the more than 5,000 polling centres.

In the days leading up to the poll, the Taliban has issued several statements urging candidates to withdraw and voters to boycott what the group calls a "malicious American conspiracy".

Shambolic preparations for the ballot have been made worse by a wave of poll-related violence that has left hundreds dead or wounded.

At least 10 candidates out of more than 2,500 contesting the lower-house election have been killed so far.

The most recent victim was Abdul Jabar Qahraman, who was blown up Wednesday by a bomb placed under his sofa in the southern province of Helmand.

Most of the candidates are political novices and include doctors, mullahs and journalists. Those with the deepest pockets are expected to win.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, which has spearheaded international efforts to keep Afghan election organisers on track, on Friday urged voters to "exercise their constitutional right to vote".

The poll is seen as a crucial test for next year's presidential election and an important milestone ahead of a UN meeting in Geneva in November where Afghanistan is under pressure to show progress on "democratic processes".

But the eleventh hour introduction of biometric voter verification machines, which have never been used in an Afghan election, threatens to derail the process.

Observers are concerned the results could be thrown into turmoil if the devices are broken, lost or destroyed.

There are also fears the data could be manipulated before preliminary results are released on November 10.

Votes cast without the controversial machines will not be counted, the Independent Election Commission has said, even though polling centre workers have received little or no training in how to use them.
Because of technical issues in some constituencies, voting was extended until Sunday. Additionally, voting in the Kandahar Province will be delayed by one week following the assassination of police commander Abdul Raziq Achakzai two days prior.