Dozens of casualties in blast at Afghan voter registration centre

KHOST (Afghanistan): A blast at a voter registration centre in Afghanistan's restive east on Sunday killed or wounded at least 30 people, officials said, capping a bloody week in the war-torn country.

The bomb had been placed in a tent being used to register voters on the grounds of a mosque, Khost provincial police chief Abdul Hanan Zadran told AFP.

"A crowd of people who had come out of the mosque had gathered to register" when the blast took place, he said, putting the casualty toll at "about 30".

But provincial deputy director of public health Gul Mohammad Mangal told AFP at least 12 people had been killed and 33 wounded in the explosion.

Mangal warned the toll could rise, with several of the wounded in a critical condition. "Ambulances are still bringing more people," he added.

It was the latest attack on election preparations and comes almost a week after 25 people were killed in a double bombing in the Afghan capital Kabul.

Nine journalists including AFP chief photographer Shah Marai were among the dead. BBC reporter Ahmad Shah was killed in a separate attack in Khost province.

The latest assault on a voter registration centre is likely to deter more people from signing up for the long-delayed parliamentary and district council elections scheduled for October 20.

On April 22 a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a voter registration centre in Kabul, killing 60 people and wounding more than 100.

Just over 1.2 million adults had registered by Saturday, three weeks after the twomonth long process began, data compiled by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) showed.

The IEC, which is overseeing preparations for the vote, hopes to register up to 14 million adults at more than 7,000 polling centres.

But if the current trend were to continue, fewer than three million people would be registered by the mid-june deadline. KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian opposition icon Anwar Ibrahim can't vote in what he believes will be a "defining election" for his country on Wednesday but even from his prison cell has remained a political force to be reckoned with.

The firebrand politician's conviction in 2015 for what he and his supporters said were false allegations of sodomy fractured the alliance of opposition parties that under Anwar's leadership was threatening the ruling National Front's decades-long hold on power.

It was Anwar's second spell in prison and it seemed he'd finally been done in by dirty political tactics.

Once a high flyer in the ruling party, in 1998 he was convicted of homosexual sodomy a criminal offense in Muslim-majority Malaysia inherited from the British colonial era and corruption following a power struggle with Mahathir Mohammad, Malaysia's authoritarian prime minister for more than two decades. Anwar, however, played an unexpected card.

From prison he helped forge a new opposition alliance by ending the twodecade feud with his former persecutorin-chief, Mahathir, who'd once called Anwar "morally unfit" to govern the country.

It was a hard but pragmatic decision, Anwar's eldest daughter, lawmaker Nurul Izzah Anwar, told The Associated Press.

Anwar, 70, is an "incorrigible optimist" who believes there must be sacrifices to bring about a change of government and badly needed reforms, she said.

"He was instrumental in galvanizing an eventual approval to get Mahathir to be part of our coalition," said Nurul Izzah. "He was the first to state that it's time for us to be actively playing our part to design the Malaysia that we want."

Mahathir, 92, now leads an opposition alliance that includes Anwar's party. They're campaigning to oust Prime Minister Najib Razak, who is mired in scandal, and end the National Front's unbroken 60-year rule.

Even with Mahathir, who is popular with Malaysia's Malay majority, the odds are stacked against the opposition. It won the popular vote in 2013 but the ruling party clung to a majority in Parliament because of an electoral system that gives more weight to Malay-dominated rural seats that traditionally support the government.

A popular Islamic student leader, Anwar joined the ruling Malay party in 1982, a year after Mahathir became prime minister.