A special report released by the UN on Tuesday said 85 civilians were killed in election-related violence on the polling day in Afghanistan’s presidential election held last month.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in the report that some 373 others were injured in the incidents.
UNAMA said the killings and injuries mainly came from the Taliban’s deliberate campaign of violence and intimidation to disrupt Afghanistan’s presidential election.
A third of the civilian casualties were children, according to the report.
“Widespread or systematic attacks against civilian populations may constitute crimes against humanity,’’said Tadamichi Yamamoto, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan.
Afghanistan’s presidential election was held on Sept. 28 under tight security, but voter turnout was reported to be the lowest since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.
According to the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan (IEC), 85 per cent of the voter turnout data, consisting of 1.7 million biometrically verified votes, has been entered into the main database.
Preliminary results are scheduled to be announced on Oct 19.
The IEC on Monday said that it had tasked its secretariat to evaluate whether the agency would be able to announce the preliminary results based on the scheduled timeline.
