KANDAHAR - Afghans risked their lives to vote in legislative elections in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, after the Taliban-claimed killing of a powerful police chief delayed the ballot by a week.

Turbaned men and burqa-clad women stood in long, segregated queues outside polling centres in the deeply conservative Kandahar provincial capital, which was blanketed with heavy security in anticipation of militant attacks.

More than half a million people - the vast majority of them men - were registered to vote in Kandahar province where more than 100 candidates competed for 11 lower-house seats.

Organisers were under pressure to avoid last weekend’s debacle that forced the Independent Election Commission (IEC) to extend the nationwide ballot by a day.

Problems with untested biometric verification devices, missing or incomplete voter rolls and absent election workers following Taliban threats to attack the ballot forced Afghans to wait hours outside polling stations, many of which opened late or not at all.

Similar issues were evident in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban and a province notorious for ballot stuffing, with many polling sites in the city opening more than an hour late -- despite assurances from IEC deputy spokeswoman Kobra Rezaei on Friday that “we are absolutely ready”.

6 dead in suicide attack

A suicide car bomb attack on a bus carrying police officers and workers in central Afghanistan killed at least six people and wounded dozens on Saturday.

The Taliban-claimed blast happened as the bus entered a police compound in the Wardak provincial capital of Maidan Shar, provincial police spokesman Hekmatullah Durrani told AFP.

Six bodies and 31 wounded had been taken to hospitals in the city, health director Salim Asgharkhil said. Provincial governor spokesman Abdul Rahman Mangal confirmed the death toll. In a WhatsApp message, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said “tens of Afghan police and soldiers were killed” in the attack.

The latest assault by the Taliban comes amid a flurry of US-led diplomatic activity to convince the group to negotiate an end to the 17-year war. In an apparent move to aid tentative talks, top Taliban commander Abdul Ghani Baradar has been released by Pakistan after more than eight years in detention, sources said Thursday.

That came less than two weeks after US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad met with the Taliban’s representatives in Qatar to discuss ending the Afghan conflict. The Taliban had demanded the release of Baradar and several other senior leaders in the direct talks with Khalilzad on October 12, a high-ranking member of the group told AFP on the condition of anonymity.