Nearly 1600 polling stations were set up across Pakistan, where over 740,000 Afghan refugees had registered to vote. Another 50,000 refugees in Iran were also eligible to vote. The ballot boxes will be flown to Kabul for the actual counting.

Election organizers selected Moqadasa Sidiqi, a science student whose family fled Kabul in 1992, as a symbolic first voter in Pakistan, where polling began half an hour earlier than in Afghanistan owing to the time difference.

The refugee voters, including hundreds of burkha clad women, thronged polling stations in Pakistan, despite a grenade attack on a polling booth at Baghbanan refugee camp near Peshawar late Friday, in which a police officer was injured.

Massive security arrangements were made at the polling stations, which were guarded by armored personnel carriers and Pakistan paramilitary and police forces.

Vehicular traffic was severely restricted near the booths due to fears of suicide attacks by insurgents who had threatened to disrupt the elections.