Afghan President Hamid Karzai remained headed for a single-round victory over his main challenger Abdullah Abdullah in partial results from last month’s disputed presidential election released yesterday.
With 92.8 percent of polling stations tallied, Karzai had 54.3 percent of the vote to 28.1 percent for Abdullah. The election commission said it had set aside ballots from another 2.15 percent of polling stations because of suspected irregularities.
Meanwhile, seven Afghan policemen were killed in a Taliban raid on their post in northern Afghanistan where attacks linked to the Islamist militants are soaring, the local governor said yesterday.
The attack happened late on Friday in Kunduz Province and comes as the country faces its worst violence in an eight-year war.
“Last night, Taliban attacked a police post in Durai area of Kunduz Province and killed seven policemen, one of them the commander of the post,” said Juma Khan Babar, district governor of Kunduz Imam Sahib district.
“Two of the policemen were left alive,” he said.
Kunduz was until recently relatively peaceful but has seen a surge in attacks since early this year.
Two New York Times reporters were kidnapped last week in the province, areas of which appear to have come under Taliban influence in recent months.
In related news, a powerful US senator on Friday warned against sending more US troops to Afghanistan, signaling growing skepticism over the war within US President Barack Obama’s own party.
Carl Levin, the influential chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was the latest top Democrat in Congress to voice opposition to a fresh military build-up in Afghanistan, as the White House weighs deploying yet more troop combat troops.
But his comments came as the Pentagon confirmed it intended to send more troops to Afghanistan to tackle a growing threat from improvised explosive devices.
Levin called for redoubling efforts to bolster Afghan security forces before any further expansion in US troops, which are set to reach 68,000 by the end of the year.
“We should increase and accelerate our efforts to support the Afghan security forces in their efforts to become self-sufficient in delivering security to their nation — before we consider whether to increase US combat forces above the levels already planned for the next few months,” said Levin, who returned last week from a trip to Afghanistan.
Levin’s comments came a day after a blunt warning from Obama’s top Democratic ally in the House of Representatives, speaker Nancy Pelosi, who suggested lawmakers and US voters are growing weary of a war that has dragged on for eight years.
The White House meanwhile said there would be no decision on the sensitive issue of more troops for “many, many weeks,” avoiding a confrontation with fellow Democrats for the moment.
“I will reiterate again that there hasn’t been a plan for and there isn’t an imminent decision on increased resources to Afghanistan,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.
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