KABUL — Embattled Afghan election officials on Monday vowed to investigate the mishandling of the weekend’s problem-plagued legislative ballot, as voters prepare to wait weeks for the results.

Initial figures show around four million voted in the long-delayed election that was extended by a day after many polling centers opened late or not at all due to glitches with biometric verification devices and missing or incomplete voter rolls.

That is less than half of the nearly nine million voters who had registered to participate in the parliamentary election, though many suspect that a significant number of those were based on fake identification documents that fraudsters hoped to use to stuff ballot boxes.

The turnout figure does not include those who voted on Sunday, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) said.

A final number would be released after voters go to the polls in Kandahar province on October 27, it said. Thursday’s Taliban attack on a high-level security meeting forced Afghan officials to delay the ballot.

Elections also are pending in the southeastern province of Ghazni.

“Bearing in mind that nine million Afghans had registered, turnout can hardly be said to have been good,” Afghanistan Analysts Network said in a report.

Afghanistan’s Electoral Complaints Commission said earlier it had received “thousands of reports of problems” over the weekend.

“We have assigned a commission to investigate the mismanagement and violations, including the late opening of the centers and use of biometric devices,” IEC chief Abdul Badi Sayyad told reporters on Monday.

“Anyone who has neglected or is involved in shortcomings will be punished.”

The IEC has been heavily criticized over the chaotic vote which was marred by scores of militant attacks that a tally showed killed or wounded nearly 300 civilians and security forces — more than four times the figure provided by the interior ministry.

Long queues of men and women were seen outside polling sites across the war-torn country, despite the Taliban’s repeated threats to attack the ballot.

Preliminary results are scheduled to be released on Nov. 10.

Meanwhile, NATO’s mission in Afghanistan said on Monday that

a US general was shot and wounded in a Taliban-claimed attack on a high-level security meeting last week that killed a powerful Afghan police chief.

Brigadier General Jeffrey Smiley was among 13 wounded when a gunman wearing an Afghan security forces uniform opened fire on the gathering that included General Scott Miller — the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan — in the southern city of Kandahar.

Miller was unhurt in the shooting inside the heavily fortified Kandahar provincial governor’s compound that NATO’s Resolute Support described as an “Afghan-on-Afghan incident”.

General Abdul Raziq, an anti-Taliban strongman credited with keeping a lid on the insurgency in the south, was killed along with the provincial intelligence chief and an Afghan journalist.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the brazen attack, saying Miller and Raziq were the targets. But American officials denied the US general was a target.

Smiley suffered non-life threatening gunshot wounds and was “in Germany receiving further treatment”, Resolute Support confirmed.

The general arrived in Afghanistan in August to head a Resolute Support mission called “Train, Advise, Assist and Command - South” based in Kandahar.

In the incident’s wake Tadeen Khan — a brother of Raziq and a member of the Afghan security forces — has been appointed acting provincial police chief, interior ministry deputy spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said. — AFP