(For more on Afghanistan, click on [ID:nAFPAK])
KABUL, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Almost a quarter of the 5.6 million votes cast in Afghanistan's parliamentary election last month were invalid, election commission officials said while releasing provisional results on Wednesday.
Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission (IEC) said it had ruled 1.3 million votes invalid, and that ballots collected from 2,543 of the 17,744 polling stations which opened for the Sept. 18 vote had been disqualified.
The election went ahead despite a threat by the Taliban to disrupt the poll. Western nations have been wary of describing the election as a success after after a fraud-marred presidential election last year.
The credibility of the latest vote, for 249 seats in the lower house of the Afghan parliament, will weigh heavily on U.S. President Barack Obama's review of Washington's Afghanistan war strategy in December.
More than 4,000 formal complaints have been lodged with the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission, meaning it may be some weeks before final results are released. (For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan, see: http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/afghanistanpakistan) (Reporting by Jonathon Burch; Editing by Paul Tait and David Fox; jonathon.burch@thomsonreuters.com; +93 794 354 074;) (If you have a query or comment on this story, send an email to newsfeedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com)
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