A bicycle-riding suicide bomber in Afghanistan has killed 16 people, including four Nato soldiers, amid a backdrop of mounting chaos over the country’s fraud-hit presidential election.
The bombing on the outskirts of the Bagram air base in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday killed four Czech soldiers, two police officers and 10 civilians, including children.
The violence came as the US called for a probe into Afghanistan’s landmark presidential election amid claims of widespread fraud and after one of the candidates rejected the preliminary results, throwing the vote deeper into crisis.
Abdullah Abdullah’s campaign branded the vote tally “a coup”, while Washington warned the figures were “not final or authoritative”. Afghanistan’s election commission said that ballots from almost one-third of polling stations would be investigated.
“We cannot ignore that there were technical problems and fraud that took place during the election process,” said Ahmad Yousuf Nouristani, chairman of Afghanistan’s national election commission. “We are not denying fraud in the election, some governors and Afghan government officials were involved in fraud.”
Mr Abdullah’s campaign immediately condemned Monday’s preliminary result of the June 14 presidential run-off, which showed Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai won 56 per cent of the vote to Mr Abdullah’s 44 per cent – less than he scored in April’s multi-candidate first round.
“We don’t accept the results . . . and we consider this as a coup against people’s votes,” said Mujib Rahman Rahimi, a spokesman for Mr Abdullah’s campaign.
The US State Department called for a “full and thorough review of all reasonable allegations of irregularities”.
“Serious allegations of fraud have been raised and have yet to be adequately investigated,” it said.
The EU warned of “highly worrying indications of potentially widespread fraud”.
The election commission said ballots from about 7,000 of the country’s nearly 23,000 polling stations would be probed, after an earlier audit of almost 2,000 stations led to the invalidation of almost 6,500 of Mr Ghani’s votes and nearly 4,500 of Mr Abdullah’s. The preliminary result shows Mr Ghani triumphing nationwide by about 4.5m votes to 3.5m, although the confirmed tally is not due to be announced until July 22.
Mr Ghani has rejected the allegation of fraud and is pushing for an end to the three-month electoral process, which is meant to seal the conflict-racked country’s first democratic handover of power. There were reports of spontaneous celebrations in Mr Ghani’s political stronghold in the southern province of Kandahar.
Time is also running out on a deal that both candidates say they will sign to allow more than 10,000 Nato soldiers to remain in the country beyond this year to support the Afghan army’s battle with Taliban insurgents. Hamid Karzai, the departing president, has refused to sign the deal to allow the foreign troops to stay.
Before the announcement, Mr Abdullah called for the results to be delayed to allow further investigation into the second-round vote on June 14.
Additional reporting by May Jeong in Kabul
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