SIXTEEN PEOPLE HAVE been wounded in Northern Afghanistan after Taliban attacks on the day the nation goes to polls in its fifth general election in four years.

“We have so far received 16 injured persons, with majority of them children, in Kunduz city hospital” Mohammad Farooq told Chinese news agency Xinhua.

Early indications, reports the Daily Telegraph, suggested turn-out was low in the second parliamentary vote in Afghanistan since the Taliban regime was ousted.

The Taliban had called for a national boycott of the elections and as voting ended at 4pm local time, it wasn’t clear whether the turnout had been lower than the thirty percent of voters registered during the 2009 Presidential elections.

Because of the violence, 461 out of the 5,816 polling stations that were supposed to open Saturday remained closed, according to the Wall Street Journal.

63,000 soldiers and 52,00 police had been deployed across the country to protect voters and the Nato-led force of 144,000 said it would be on standby.

The New York Times reports on further Taliban activity in the Kandahar region. “The city of Kandahar seemed particularly hard hit. Explosions were heard every half hour through the morning, and 31 rockets were fired by insurgents, according to an intelligence official there.”