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Karzai winner of Afghanistan election: Report

Society Materials 23 August 2009 16:56 (UTC +04:00)

Reports from Afghanistan's election commission suggest incumbent President Hamed Karzai is the winner of the presidential election, excluding the possibility of runoff.

Afghan media announced on Sunday that sources inside the election commission said President Karzai had secured over 70% of the votes counted so far.

According to the sources, of the 4,514,084 of the votes counted by Saturday evening, Karzai has won 3,244,196 of the votes while his main rival former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah came in second with 1,029,467 (23 percent), a Press TV correspondent reported.

The two were followed by Dr. Ramazan Bashardost with 189,659 votes, Dr. Ashraf Ghani with 47,954 votes and Mirwais Yassini with 2,714 votes.

Media reports also said that two million votes have not been counted yet, which shows that nearly 6.5 millions Afghan cast their ballots in the country's second presidential election since the 2001 ouster of the Taliban-led regime.

Nearly 17 million Afghans were eligible to vote in Friday's presidential election

This is while Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission has not confirmed the report of Karzai's win , saying the victor will not be announced until September 3. Preliminary results are expected on Tuesday.

Both leading candidates --Karzai and Abdullah-- have claimed victory in the August 20 election.

The vote is expected to go to a second round in October if neither candidate wins an outright majority of 50 percent.

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