Two election campaign teams led by Abdullah Abdullah and Rahmatullah Nabil have criticized the government for using security forces to suppress protestors who wanted to prevent the vote recount process which resumed on Sunday.
The two teams are opposing the recount over a disputed 300,000 votes that they insist should not be recounted.
“A clash has happened. We want an investigation by an impartial team about how the clash happened which resulted in the martyrdom of one of our observers and the wounding of two others,” said Fraidoon Khwazoon, a member of the Stability and Convergence team led by Abdullah Abdullah.
Meanwhile, former president Hamid Karzai in a statement said the reports which say government forces opened fire on protestors in Kunduz “is a matter of grave concern.”
Security officials and the provincial office of the Independent Election Commission rejected any type of clash on Sunday between security forces and protestors in Kunduz. But they said five people were wounded in a mortar attack on the IEC office in Kunduz.
“The wounded do not belong to any group or election campaign team; they are locals,” Kunduz police chief Abdul Rasheed Bashir said.
“Some mortars were fired by militants towards the election commission office. The (voter recount) process was stopped for half an hour but we resumed the process after that and it ended by 8pm at night,” said the IEC chief in Kunduz, Nooruddin Fitrat.
Presidential candidate Rahmatullah Nabil, speaking at a news conference on Monday, said security forces should not be used for personal and political purposes.
“You should not let the army or the forces which you trained for defending democracy be used for suppressing democracy,” Nabil said.
The Presidential Palace responded: “Unfortunately, some of politicians from our candidates are trying-- by their baseless remarks-- to defame our forces,” presidential spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said.
“No one has been targeted by our forces. Protest is the right of every citizen, but it should be based on rules,” said Nusrat Rahimi, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior Affairs.