Only 14 Die in Pakistani Election Day Violence– John Kerry Impressed With Process

Pakistan votes- 14 are dead.
I was relatively calm– relatively.

Success?
A boy stands beside a security guard of an election candidate outside a campaigning office a day before general elections in Pakistan’s tribal town of Bannu February 17, 2008. Pakistani opposition politicians said on Sunday the government planned to rig the vote in general elections on Monday that could bring in a parliament keen to force President Pervez Musharraf from power. Fears of militant violence have overshadowed the campaign and are expected to result in a low turnout. (REUTERS/Adeel Khan)

Nine people were killed during election day violence in Pakistan.
The BBC reported:

Polls have officially shut in Pakistan, after a key election which it is hoped will help end the country’s crisis.
The parliamentary poll was delayed after the killing of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, and is intended to complete a transition to civilian rule.

BBC correspondents reported many irregularities in voting, and some incidents of violence.

However, there were none of the major bomb attacks which overshadowed the run-up to the elections.

But fears of violence dissuaded many of the country’s 80 million eligible voters from leaving their homes, and voting in many places was slow.

At least nine people are reported to have been killed in election related violence on the eve of the vote and on the day itself.

In one incident in Daska district in the Punjab, a polling agent from one party reportedly shot dead an agent from a rival party after a dispute.

In another, on Sunday, at least four people, including a candidate, were reported to have been killed after an attack on former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N party.


Pakistan’s Jamiat Ulma-e-Islam (JUI) party leader Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman casts his vote at a polling station in Dera Ismael Khan February 18, 2008. Fears of violence overshadowed Pakistan’s general election on Monday with 80,000 troops backing up police to watch over a vote that could return a parliament set on driving President Pervez Musharraf from office. (REUTERS/Mustansar Baloch)

John F. Kerry who was observing the elections told Pakistani News that he was impressed with the process.

UPDATE: The International News raised the death toll to 14 with a dozen injured in Karachi violence.

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