President Hamid Karzai urged Afghans to vote in Saturday's parliamentary election as rocket and bomb attacks struck across the country, DPA reported.
"As in every election we do hope that there will be high voter turnout and nobody is deterred by security incidents which I am sure there will be some," Karzai told reporters at a polling station near to his fortified presidential palace.
The president, who opened the Amani High School voting station by casting his own ballot, said that he hoped the people would be able to vote for their candidate of choice "without the pressure or force of the money or any other pressure."
The people should "take the country many steps forward into a better future" by voting for parliamentarians despite recent threats from the Taliban aiming to derail the election, he added.
A bomb injured a worker for the Independent Election Commission in a polling station in a school in the eastern city of Chost, the head of the city's police said.
In Kabul, an officer of the intelligence service was wounded by a bomb shortly before the polls opened at 7 am (0230 GMT), police said.
Earlier Saturday, a rocket was fired at the Kabul offices of the state-run broadcaster Radio TV Afghanistan, with no reported injuries.
Rocket attacks were also reported in the eastern city of Jalalabad, according to television broadcaster Tolo TV.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance force said that it killed four insurgents in the northern province of Kunduz on Friday.