Taliban Militants Want Afghans to Boycott Vote: ; Violence Before Sunday's Historic Poll Leaves 5 Dead

Summary

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KABUL, Afghanistan - Taliban rebels urged Afghans on Friday to boycott weekend legislative elections many citizens hope will marginalize the insurgents, while a candidate was shot dead and four other people were killed in bombings near polling stations.

With about 100,000 Afghan police and soldiers and 30,000 foreign troops on alert, election workers used donkeys, dilapidated trucks and helicopters to haul millions of paper ballots to more than 6,000 polling centers ahead of Sunday's vote.

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Taliban Militants Want Afghans to Boycott Vote: ; Violence Before Sunday's Historic Poll Leaves 5 Dead

Hopes are high that the vote will end a quarter-century of violence and entrench a fragile democracy by demonstrating public support for an elected government. But the extremist Taliban and other terro...

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