Millions of Afghans voted Saturday in their second parliamentary poll since the 2001 US-led invasion overthrew the Taliban regime, against a backdrop of insurgent threats and attacks.

With counting under way and the first preliminary results expected on Wednesday, the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) was gathering reports of irregularities so that final results can be certified by October 31.

The ECC said 702 complaints were received in the first day after polling closed, but that number could "significantly rise" before a 72-hour deadline for submissions expires at 4:00 pm on Tuesday.

Afghanistan's main election observer body, the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA) which fielded almost 7,000 observers across the country, said some were prevented from carrying out their duties.

In its first report since the vote, FEFA said fake voter cards were found in 352 polling centres, multiple voting was witnessed at 1,228 sites and underage voting took place in 1,259 places.

Election officials said 5,355 polling centres opened on election day but that around 1,200 remained shut because security was poor.

Some polling centres opened late, and there were widespread allegations of bias by election workers, as well as problems with indelible ink -- supposed to guard against a person voting more than once -- that could be washed off.

FEFA called on the Independent Election Commission (IEC) to cooperate with the ECC in "investigations of fraud and coercion and to resist political pressure to announce the final results early without full verification of legitimate votes".

The IEC acknowledged in a statement that some fraud was "inevitable" and said it was "fully committed to working with the ECC to eliminate the effect from the final results insofar as possible".

President Hamid Karzai, whose own re-election last year was mired in fraud, has cancelled a trip to the UN General Assembly in New York to monitor the outcome of the polls, his spokesman Waheed Omer told reporters.

Omer said it was "too early" to judge the election, adding: "Violations have surely taken place but we are awaiting the relevant authorities to address these problems."

Afghanistan is one of the most corrupt countries in the world and irregularities had been expected after last year's presidential poll in which more than a million votes were cancelled as fraudulent.

Some 2,500 candidates are vying for 249 seats in the lower house of parliament, the Wolesi Jirga, and observers from the Washington-based National Democratic Institute said winning margins were likely to be slim.

Afghan and international observers must follow the post-election process, it said, to help shift a "pervasive mistrust" of electoral institutions among the population.

The IEC said early figures showed four million people had voted, putting turnout at 40 percent of those able to vote -- where polling stations opened.

In last year's presidential election, turnout was estimated at 38.8 percent, according to IEC figures. The ECC said it invalidated more than 1.2 million votes, mainly on the basis of fraud and many in favour of Karzai.

NATO said at least 22 people were killed in polling day violence. The IEC said bodies of three election workers were found Sunday in Balkh, one of the provinces in the north where violence has increased over the last year.

NATO figures showed a total of 294 insurgent attacks on Saturday, which the military compared favourably to 479 insurgent attacks on August 20 last year, the day of the presidential election.

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan said commanders on the ground believed insurgent attacks were down by around a third on the 2009 election.

"Less than one percent of the polling stations experienced significant violence," he said, adding: "Most of the attacks that we saw during the elections were small arms fire, rocket propelled grenades... There were only a few IEDs, there were no effective suicide bombers."

The Taliban released a statement saying it had disrupted the poll enough to cause it to "fail."

"The Afghan Islamic Emirate congratulates this achievement," said the statement, using the name of the Taliban's shadow government.

The United States and NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have around 150,000 troops in the country fighting to bring an end to the war, which is dragging towards its 10th year.

US General David Petraeus, commander of the international force in Afghanistan, has commended the role played by Afghan forces, who were supported by ISAF troops in providing security for the vote.

earlier related report
British forces hand over flashpoint Afghan district to US
London (AFP) Sept 20, 2010 - British troops transferred responsibility for security in the Sangin district of southern Afghanistan to US forces Monday, leaving an area where Britain suffered its worst losses since the invasion.

The military insisted that the handover was not an admission of defeat after four years of fighting with Taliban insurgents following the British arrival in the dusty market town in Helmand province in 2006.

"British forces have served in Sangin over the last four years and should be very proud of the achievements they have made in one of the most challenging areas of Afghanistan," British defence minister Liam Fox said.

"The level of sacrifice has been high and we should never forget the many brave troops who have lost their lives in the pursuit of success in an international mission rooted firmly in our own national security in the UK."

More than 100 British troops have died in Sangin district, accounting for nearly a third of their total 337 casualties since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 to topple the Taliban regime following the September 11 attacks.

After the handover to the US Marine Corps on Monday, the estimated 1,000 British Royal Marines in Sangin will be redeployed to central Helmand, another hotspot for insurgent violence and opium production, the military said.

Asked if the move was an admission of defeat, defnce ministry spokesman Major General Gordon Messenger told BBC radio: "It certainly won't look like that on the ground."

Colonel Stuart Tootal, a retired British army officer who commanded the first battle group of 1,200 soldiers sent into Sangin four years ago, also rejected talk of submission.

"This is a handover, not a pullout," he told the BBC.

"Despite the emotional attachment to Sangin, and the job's not finished yet and the Americans will continue it on, it's not a defeat in any way at all.

"That's from someone who served there and I lost half of my soldiers who were killed here (in Afghanistan) in Sangin."

British forces faced some of their fiercest fighting since World War II in Sangin as they tried to flush out insurgents and curb opium production.

They were also trying to secure electricity lines from an under-construction dam that would have supplied energy for much of southern Afghanistan.

The Ministry of Defence said that since 2006 there had been reform of local governance and improvement in services, while twice as many shops were now open in the town's bazaar compared with last year due to increased security.

"Our troops operating in Sangin have been taking the fight to the Taliban and by doing so have reduced the threat of violence spreading elsewhere," Messenger said in a statement.

But in a warning to the US forces taking over the area, he said that the area "is and will continue to be a challenging area because of its strategic importance to the Afghan Government, ISAF and the insurgency".

In July the Taliban claimed that British troops were pulling out of Sangin because of pressure from the militants' attacks, adding that it was the "start of the British forces' defeat in Afghanistan".

Britain has 8,000 troops in Helmand, the lion's share of its 9,500-strong force in Afghanistan, which comes under the command of ISAF.

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