Family Life

08.26.09 | FL News Team

(Kabul) -- Results of Afghanistan's presidential election continue to trickle in.  Early figures released Tuesday by Afghan election officials showed incumbent President Hamid Karzai in the lead with 41-percent of the vote, while main challenger Abdullah Abdullah held 39-percent.  More results are expected to be released today.

Afghan officials won't have the official count completed until September 3rd.  There will be a runoff unless one candidate gets more than 50-percent of the vote.  

Meanwhile, a truck bombing in Kandahar on Tuesday night left 43 Afghan civilians dead and another 65 wounded.  The bombing marked the worst attack of its kind in the war-torn nation in over a year.  It happened on the same day four American soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan, bringing the number of U.S. troop deaths in the country this year to their highest level since the war began.

The Taliban had stepped up attacks across Afghanistan in the months leading up to Thursday's presidential elections and had scared off millions of voters with threats of reprisals.  However, until Tuesday, post-election violence had remained relatively low.